JAN. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia is bracing itself for a major celebrity visit when Kim Kardashian, a Los Angeles-based reality TV star, and her sisters travel to Yerevan later this year. US media announced that the sisters were planning a visit to their ancestral homeland.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan’s Central Bank has cut its refinancing rate for domestic banks to 9% from 10%, media reported. The refinancing rate is the cost of borrowing between financial institutions. The Central Bank said it had cut the refinancing rate to try and boost investment.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A video distributed by the extremist group IS reportedly shows a Kazakh boy aged 10-years-old shooting dead two men who are said to have worked for the Russian intelligence agencies. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said that the boy appears to be the same boy shown in an IS propaganda video at the end of last year.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — On his first major foreign trip of 2015, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev travelled to Berlin to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Reports from Berlin said the two leaders discussed the Ukraine war and developing business links.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s currency reserves dropped by 12.5% in 2014 to just under $2b, the head of the Central Bank, Tolkubek Abdygulov, was quoted by media as saying. The drop was due to Central Bank interventions to try to prop up the Kyrgyz som, under pressure from a falling Russian rouble.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Kazakh court extended the pre-trial house arrest of former PM Serik Akhmetov. Mr Akhmetov, who was arrested in November and accused of corruption, was Kazakh PM between Sept. 2012 and April 2014. His fall from grace highlights the fragile nature of power in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The New York Times newspaper inadvertently highlighted the still relatively obscure nature of Central Asia by printing an article in which it referred to Kyrbekistan instead of Kyrgyzstan. Independent only since 1991, statehood and identity are important markers for Central Asian countries.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia’s Gazprom has given up searching for oil in two of its four exploration blocks in Tajikistan, media reported. Interfax, a Russian news agency, said that Gazprom had been working since 2003 on the projects. It still plans to explore its two remaining blocks. Tajikistan has said that it hopes a major oil and gas discovery will boost its economic prospects.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — At the first session of the lower house of parliament after an election, Uzbek president Islam Karimov said Uzbekistan will never join a group that tries to recreate the USSR. Mr Karimov’s comments appear to be a reference to the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union which includes Kazakhstan, Armenia and Belarus.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
>>Demonstration against closure of political magazine>>
JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a rare show of public dissent in Kazakhstan, a small crowd gathered in Almaty to protest against the closure of weekly opposition newspaper Adam bol”.
Led by the newspaper editor, Gulzhan Yergaliyeva, a group of 25 journalists and activists walked across the Arbat, a pedestrian and commercial zone in the centre of the former capital shouting slogans and waving placards that challenged Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev to rescind the order to close the magazine.
Black-clad security officers stood to the side closely monitoring the protest.
“The presence of ‘men in black’ is always felt at these events,” Dina Baidildayeva a high-profile blogger who filmed the protest told the Bulletin.
The authorities in Kazakhstan have clamped down on political pluralism and media freedom over the past few years, especially in the wake of the Zhanaozen riots in west Kazakhstan in 2011 that killed at least 15 people. Allowing the Adam bol demonstration, therefore, was fairly remarkable.
The newspaper was shut down last November, after it published an article on Ukraine that highlighted Kazakhs fighting in the Ukrainian civil war. The article also questioned Russia’s role in the conflict.
Nate Schenkkan, Central Asia programme officer at the US media watchdog NGO Freedom House, said: “The article on Ukraine could have been just a pretext to do away with an uncomfortable publication for the leadership.”
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
