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Baku accepts Eurovision-2012 Host City Insignia

On January 25th Azerbaijan`s capital accepted a Host City Insignia of the Eurovision-2012 Song Contest in a colorful and impressive ceremony at the Buta Palace. 
Dusseldorf`s Lord Major Drik Elbers handed over the symbolic key to the Eurovision Song Contest to Baku Mayor Hajibala Abutalibov and Baku officially took over the Eurovision 2012 hosting.
Elbers expressed confidence the contest would be a success.
Abutalibov congratulated the Azerbaijani people on the occasion, and stressed the importance of the contest.
The Baku Mayor said all preparatory work for the Eurovision-2012 contest was being carried out under President Ilham Aliyev`s control.
The ceremony also saw the launch of the contest`s motto. "Light your fire!" has been determined as the motto for the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest. Fire and buta (national pattern of Azerbaijan and many Eastern countries) are the main elements of the 2012 Eurovision logo.
If the 2011 contest took place under the slogan Feel your heart beat!, Baku 2012 will go into the history books under the motto Light your fire!
Azerbaijan has been known as the Land Of Fire for a while now and the symbol of fire and flames is used extensively across the country. The people of Azerbaijan also take great pride in this association with fire.
"Since the dawn of time, mankind has come together around fire to communicate through the telling of stories, song and dance. The Eurovision Song Contest is where people come together to celebrate and communicate through song and dance," the creators explained the idea behind the theme art.
All of that can be seen visually in the theme art of the 2012 edition of Europe's favourite TV show.
The ceremony also featured the draw to decide which of 37 participating countries would appear in either the first or second semi-final of the Eurovision-2012 song contest.
The place of G5 countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK) and host-country Azerbaijan among the semi-finalists was also determined.
The draw for the running order of the semi-finals, finals, and the order of voting will be held in March.
The ceremony brought together MPs, representatives of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), including the contest`s Executive Supervisor Jon Ola Sand, and representatives of the diplomatic corps, foreign guests and cultural workers.
The event was covered by Georgian, Finnish, German, Serbian, Maltase, Moldovan, Estonian and Belarusian TVs, as well as Euronews.
Azerbaijan was crowned the winner of last year's Eurovision Song Contest in Germany, with Eldar Gasimov and Nigar Jamal duo scoring 221 points with their love song, Running Scared.

AzerTAc

26 January 2012, Thursday
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1 January

On May 19th President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, who is in Chicago, the USA, to attend a NATO summit, met Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili. 
The two presidents praised the development of the Azerbaijan-Georgia relations in a variety of fields.