Category Archives: Uncategorised

Uzbekistan buys Airbus military planes

JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek defence ministry has ordered four C295W military transport planes manufactured by Airbus at its plant in Seville, Spain, Tashkent-based news agency uzdaily.com reported.

There has been no official confirmation from the Uzbek government but for
Uzbek media to report on a deal like this is a nod to its veracity. Plane spotters in Seville have also posted photographs online of a C295W plane carrying an Uzbek flag on its wing tail.

Airbus, which is headquar- tered in Paris and is part owned by Germany, France and Spain, has also dodged commenting on the deal although one of its representatives was quoted by Uzbek media in June at an airshow in France.

“For Airbus is a great honour to participate in the modernisation of Uzbekistan Airways,” the director for Airbus sales in Central Asia and eastern Europe, Stefan Konkoly, told the website jahonnews.uz.

Mr Konkoly, apparently, didn’t mention a deal with the Uzbek military.

Europe has only recently patched up its relationship with Uzbekistan. A few years ago, it considered Uzbekistan a pariah state. Human rights groups had accused the Uzbek government of shooting dead hundreds of protesters in 2005 in the town of Andijan in the east of the country.

More recently, though, Europe and NATO needed Uzbek support to pull its military out of Afghanistan.

Part of the deal was to sell or leave behind so-called non-lethal military equipment to fight Islamic extremism and drug trafficking.

Each Airbus C295W military transport plane can carry 70 soldiers and 10 tonnes of kit.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Briton died in car crash in Azerbaijan

JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – One British national was killed in a car crash in central Baku, media reported. He had been working on the European Games. At the start of Games a bus crashed into Austrian swimmers in the Olympic Village badly injuring one of them.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Georgian Foreign Minister travels to S. America

JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian Foreign Minister Tamar Beruchashvili started a tour of Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, media reported, the first of its kind by a Georgian minister. Ms Beruchashvili said the main aim of the trip was to boost awareness of Georgia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Kazakhstan awarded Snowden

JUNE 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Union of Journalists handed Edward Snowden, the former US intelligence agent who is now living in exile in Russia, a special award for services to investigative journalism. The US wants Mr Snowden extradited to face espionage-related charges.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Kazakhstan’s GDP suffers high energy intensity

JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan is one of the least energy efficient countries in the world for generating economic growth, Tomasz Telma, regional director for Europe, Middle East and North Africa at the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, told Bnews.kz.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Iran-Uzbekistan trade increases

JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iran has agreed to boost the amount of cotton and fertiliser from Uzbekistan that it transports along its railway, media reported. Transit routes through Iran, Central Asian states gain access to ports on the Persian Gulf.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Uzbekistan burns drugs

JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Apparently aimed at showing off their determination to crack- down on the drugs trade from Afghanistan, Uzbek security officials burnt 1.4 tonnes of drugs — including opium and heroin — at a factory outside Tashkent in front of foreign diplomats.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Exam stress may trigger suicides in Kazakhstan

ALMATY/ASTANA/ Kazakhstan , JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Politicians, teachers and schoolchildren in Kazakhstan are debating the value of a new standardised test that gives access to university grants and financial aid.

Some have linked the test to the high rate of youth suicides.

And the link may not be far-fetched. Kazakhstan has one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world and it has risen since the exam was released a few years ago.

At the Hazret Sultan mosque in Astana, the largest in Central Asia, deputy Imam Maksat Kairgaliyev said that the stress the new test placed students under and the relatively high suicide rate for young people in Kazakhstan were linked.

“This has unfortunately become a pattern,” he said.

Introduced in 2009, the Unified National Test (ENT is its Russian acronym) has become less and less popular among students.

Last May in Aktobe, two 17-year old classmates killed themselves. Their suicide notes both blamed ENT. Another 18-year-old schoolgirl in southern Kazakhstan tried to kill herself just after sitting the ENT test.

Azamat, a first-year student at a university in Almaty, told the Bulletin: “Kids freak out because their future depends [on the test] and which university picks them.”

MPs have also raised concerns. In November 2012, Dariga Nazarbayeva, the eldest daughter of the president and member of the Parliament, was among the first to connect the ENT to youth suicides during a question time with the minister of education.

But the government has defended bringing in the ENT as an effective way of measuring who the best people are to receive grants and various financial aid. Deputy PM Berdybek Saparbayev said the link is inappropriate. “High numbers of suicide are recorded in our country every year,” he said. “But it’s not appropriate to link that to the youth fearing the ENT.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Georgia’s GDP deflator increasing

JUNE 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s GDP deflator outstripped its nominal GDP growth for the second consecutive quarter, official data showed, highlighting the stagnating economy. Georgia’s GDP deflator measured 5.1% in Q1, compared to GDP growth of 3.1% nominal GDP growth. The GDP deflator is an important measure of real GDP growth. The GDP deflator last outstripped nominal GDP growth in 2011.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Azerbaijan wants F1 team sponsorship

JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan wants to sponsor a Formula 1 team, sports minister Azad Rakhimov said. Mr Rakhimov said he would like to see a team race in the Azerbaijani national colours. Baku hosts an F1 race in 2016 and wants to increase its profile by sponsoring sports teams.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)