From Reuters:
Turkmenistan's autocratic president has opened a gleaming new leisure centre, equipped with a swimming pool, air conditioning and even medical facilities -- all of it for horses.
President-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov showed foreign diplomats around the vast $15 million (8.4 million pounds) complex which includes an operating theatre, a hippodrome and stables kept cool from the desert heat.
The new equine centre, shown on state television, proved something of a contrast to conditions for many people in the gas-rich yet impoverished Central Asian state.
Niyazov, officially known as Turkmenbashi or Father of the Turkmen, last week fired several ministers for failing to bridge huge salary arrears, which average little more than the official minimum wage of $70 a month and are regularly paid late.
Earlier this year he fired 15,000 nurses and medical staff -- likely to be replaced by conscripted soldiers -- in an unexpected shock reform of the national health system.
But the horse complex, named Turkmenbashi after him, is equipped with modern X-ray and ultrasonic scanning machines in its state of the art equine operating theatre.