JUNE 4 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – NATO’s general-secretary, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, announced that transit deals had been struck with Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan to allow the Western military alliance to withdraw kit from Afghanistan across their territories. The deals cement the strategic and political importance of Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 091, published on June 8 2012)
MAY 30 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – A shallow earthquake measuring 5.7 on the Richter Scale shook Almaty, 150km from the epicentre. Since then, local authorities have measured at least eight aftershocks although no serious damage has been reported. Last year a similar size earthquake panicked people living in the city.
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(News report from Issue No. 090, published on June 1 2012)
MAY 16 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Perhaps underlining just how important Russian President Vladimir Putin views relations with Kazakhstan, his first overseas mission in his third presidential term will be to visit Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev in Astana on May 25, media reported. Kazakhstan is part of the Eurasian Union with Russia and Belarus.
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(News report from Issue No. 088, published on May 18 2012)
MAY 11 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh government insisted a probe into corruption at Italian energy company ENI would not slow development of its Kashagan Caspian Sea oil field. ENI is the lead company in Kashagan, one of the biggest oil finds in the past 40 years. Last week Italian prosecutors opened an investigation into ENI’s foreign deals.
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(News report from Issue No. 088, published on May 18 2012)
MAY 8 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Sixteen people died when an overcrowded mini-bus carrying migrant workers to Russia from southern Kyrgyzstan hit an oncoming truck. The route to and from Russia is lucrative as hundreds of thousands of workers, especially from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, work in Russia. The roads, though, can be dangerous.
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(News report from Issue No. 087, published on May 11 2012)
MAY 2 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Other than Georgia, US-based Freedom House rated media in Central Asia and the South Caucasus as “Not Free”. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan propped up the bottom of the table, closely followed by Kazakhstan. Media freedom in Georgia, the report said, had improved in 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 086, published on May 4 2012)
MAY 1 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh media rather cryptically reported that Kazakhstan intends to build 2,500km of “engineering facilities” along its borders with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. These facilities are likely to be border defences and are linked both to combating drug and human trafficking as well as Kazakhstan’s historical mistrust of its southern neighbours.
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(News report from Issue No. 086, published on May 4 2012)
APRIL 19 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Two men stabbed Lukpan Akhmedyarov, a reporter for an independent newspaper in Uralsk, north-west Kazakhstan, multiple times in one of the most savage attacks on a journalist in the country’s recent history. Mr Akhmedyarov survived the attempted murder.
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(News report from Issue No. 085, published on April 27 2012)
APRIL 23 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – A Kazakh court extended by 6 months a ban on Kazakhstan’s Communist Party, one of the few opposition political parties with nationwide support. The Communist Party was first banned in October for 6 months for colluding with an outlawed party. This ban covered a parliamentary election in January.
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(News report from Issue No. 085, published on April 27 2012)
APRIL 10 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Average wages in Kazakhstan were roughly $623 in February, about 18% higher than a year ago, the national statistics office reported. The increase is far higher than inflation which officially measured 7.4% in 2011. Inflation has slowed in Kazakhstan in 2012, triggering a couple of interest rate cuts.
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(News report from Issue No. 083, published on April 13 2012)
