As reported news.am, Yerevan Circus art-director Sos Petrosyan announced, that the circus building restoration will be completed in October 2014, a year later than the scheduled date. The Armenian circus restoration began in September 2011 and would be completed in October 2013. According to Mr. Petrosyan, construction delays are associated with design changes, and as a result, restoration plan changes into new construction. The new building will have two-story parking, and the "riding arena" will rise by 6 meters higher. In this regard, the circus building roof also needs to be raised to 6 meters higher. Subsequently, the building designers decided to demolish the old building and to build the new one. The new circus building differs from the old one by height, seats will be increased by 500, the underground floor and 3 arenas will be added, and so on. According to preliminary data the restoration budget was US$ 10 million, but the new construction will double the budget. The Yerevan Circus old building was built in 1962 and never has been renovated.

Damac Properties announced its first major new product launch since 2008, with 295 premium serviced hotel apartments in the Burj area of Dubai, reported the Arabianbusiness. The Distinction will be a 195 meter, 53-storey tower with views of the fountain, mall and the Burj Khalifa, the world's largest tower. The developer said in a statement that the launch was on the back of "improved market sentiment" in the emirate. The Distinction will "serve the very top top-end luxury sector of the emirate's real estate market". Dubai is in the grip of a new era of real estate expansion following the announcement of the multi-billion dollar Mohammed Bin Rashid City. "Luxury projects in prime locations are driving the UAE property resurgence and The Distinction will provide the quality of finish and service expected at this end of the market," said Niall McLoughlin, senior vice president, Damac Properties. Main contractor, ANC Contracting, has already started work on the project, which is set for completion in the first quarter of 2015 and will be a mix of studios, one, two, three and four-bedroom penthouses. The tower will include a luxury spa, a gymnasium and swimming pool. Damac has so far completed 37 buildings across the UAE, with 7,817 units and nearly 14,000,000 sq ft of space.

Construction of gas pipeline "South Stream" begins at the 'Russkaya' compressor station site near Anapa. The 900 kilometer long and maximum 2 kilometer deep "South Stream" will carry Russian gas to southern Europe through the Black Sea. South Stream begins from Russia's Anapa on the Black Sea shore, crosses the sea and comes to Bulgaria. Further transportation will be made via territories of Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia to northern Italy. From the territory of Serbia, there will be gas transporting lines to Croatia and to the Republic of Srpska. The new pipeline will be able to carry 63 billion cubic meters gas. The first gas is expected to be pumped through the pipeline in 2015, and export some 63 billion cubic meters to southern Europe. After beginning of construction, Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yildiz told reporters, that Turkey is not planning to take part in the South Stream gas pipeline project, being more interested in Nabucco-West and the Trans-Anatolian natural gas pipeline projects. However, Turkey is interested to increase Russian gas imports to satisfy its growing domestic demand, he said and added that it had not yet been decided which route to use for that, either the Blue Stream pipeline or a pipeline traversing Bulgaria.

Seeking to cement its position as a Middle East center for transport and tourism, Dubai has unveiled several grandiose construction projects that bear some of the hallmarks of the debt-laden boom years that nearly brought the emirate to its knees, reported The Wall Street Journal. Last month, Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum ordered the construction of a new city development named after himself, a project that could cost $10 billion, according to some estimates. It envisages 100 hotels, the world's largest shopping mall, parks, art galleries and exhibition centers. Soon after, he announced plans for a $2.7 billion leisure complex of five theme parks. Dubai also is pushing its candidacy to host the World Expo in 2020, the first time a city in the Middle East would host this event, which would involve the construction of an exhibition center on the outskirts of the emirate. While Dubai is enjoying an economic recovery fueled by a surge in key areas such as trade, tourism and transport, it still has to repay roughly $100 billion of debt from the previous property boom, which ended in 2008. The plans raise questions about how the ambitious construction will be financed and whether it will lead to more oversupply in a still-fragile property market. "Dubai was built with unbridled vision, and the recently announced aspirations will be tempered by lender appetite, competition for finance in other regional markets and increased levels of diligence by more experienced investors," said Rizwan Shah, managing director, corporate finance at Deloitte Middle East. "Funding sources and structures for Dubai will need to be different than those that were used precrisis," Mr. Shah said. During the boom years between 2004 and 2007, various Dubai-related entities expanded too quickly on cheap debt provided by both local and regional lenders. Once the global crisis set in, property prices in the emirate plunged as much as 60%, leaving banks with a debt hangover they still are wrestling with. When Dubai developer Nakheel was unable to pay back a $4.1 billion Islamic bond in 2009, Dubai had to turn to its oil-rich neighbor Abu Dhabi for a $10 billion loan to stay afloat. Some are starting to worry that Dubai is repeating the mistakes of the past by stoking another property boom. "Have we learned? We all say we have, but a lot of people are doing the same thing that they were doing three to four years ago," said Peter Jodlowski, chief financial officer at the Emirates Investment Authority, one of country's wealth funds, at a recent financial conference. "So in five years' time, we'll all be asking: How did that happen?" He and other attendees at the conference were discussing corporate governance in the region and the role banks had played during the buildup to the crisis.

Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who designed some of the 20th Century's most famous modernist buildings, has died just before his 105th birthday. Last year on December 15 he feted his 104th birthday in his Rio workshop overlooking Copacabana beach. He rose to international fame as the architect of the main government buildings in the futuristic Brazilian capital, Brasilia, inaugurated in 1960. During a long career in which he received top professional honors (in 1988, he was awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize) Mr. Niemeyer also worked with Swiss-born modernist architect Le Corbusier on the UN building in New York and, as a lifelong communist sympathizer, designed the French party's head office in Paris while in exile from Brazil's military rulers. He continued to work on new projects until earlier this year. Last year the official opening of Niemeyer Center (Centro Niemeyer) was held in Aviles, (Asturias, Spain). Through his designs, Mr. Niemeyer protested the "orthodox functionalism" of modern building style that he thought left little room for sensuality. A bikini admirer, he often chose to link his work with Brazil's shapely beach women. "Form follows feminine," he said, twisting architect Louis Sullivan's famous remark about function. For inspiration, he drew on Brazil's colonial heritage with its ornate, baroque architecture, and applied new building materials and methods of construction. He favored reinforced concrete in an economy lacking in steel and created works of voluptuousness and space-age allure: smooth ramps leading to broad esplanades, domes shaped like soup bowls and entire buildings resembling flying saucers. His style was not to everyone's taste, and for a communist some people say his work was not very people-friendly - focusing more on the architecture's form than on its inhabitants or functionality. Niemeyer went on to create more than 600 buildings around the world. His legacy endures in museums, monuments, schools and churches in Brazil and beyond. Many of the designs were initially sketched on a table overlooking his beloved Rio de Janeiro and its famous Copacabana beach, replete with the women, waves and hills from which he drew such inspiration.