Loud techno music is, ironically, the latest weapon for achieving peace and quiet in the troubled Black Sea.
A collective effort, under the United Nations banner, will encourage the different peoples of the troubled Crimea to get their House in order and live in harmony. And the organisers believe the compulsive beat is a useful way of getting young people to pay attention.
One of the biggest tensions in the former Soviet area arises from the return of the former Crimean Tartars and other ethnic minorities whose parents and grandparents were deported from the area 50 years ago by order of Josef Stalin.
The director of The Crimea Tolerance through Arts and Culture programme, Ken Kutch, has a regular time slot on local radio, called Techno for Tolerance, in which he introduces the latest dance music from London. Between tracks he announces the winning entries in 'tolerance poetry competitions' and advertises 'tolerance multi-cultural events' involving collaborations by artists of different ethnic origins.
Home comforts An appeal to artists from the San Francisco and Geneva branches of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office: their walls are unbearably bare, and employees crave a few visual memories of their home town - and, as good economists, they are prepared to pay (a bit) for them.
If you are a HK resident who has unframed works in any media that might loosely fit within the subject of 'ways of life in Hong Kong' or 'aspects of commercial life in Hong Kong' and would be willing to sell them for between $5,000 and $13,000, then contact the Arts Development Council on 2827-8786, and have slides at the ready. Deadline for submission is tomorrow at 5pm.