Category archive for ‘News’ 
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Coolest Pingback Ever!
Global Voices has a Malagasy edition and apparently someone felt that Madagascarians might be interested in Aliya Nazarbayeva’s birthday performers and pinged my earlier post about Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears and Sting on this post in Malagasy. I just think it’s cool that I had to google a sample of the language to figure it [...]
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Happy Valentine’s Day: You’re Under Arrest!
Missed this cute little story: On Valentine’s Day, policewomen handed out flowers and cards instead of tickets [RU] to traffic law violators in Kostanai province. On the back of the Valentine’s Day cards were explainations of the traffic laws.
The head of the traffic police section in Kostanai was quoted by zakon.kz as saying, “Today, [...] -
Is Russia Making It Up?
Just as the lease comes up on Baikanour and the Kazakhstan Parliament considers increasing the price (Subscription Only) for Russia to rent and operate the base, Russia is making accusations that Kazakhstan is interfering. The charges are sufficiently vague:
Kazakhstan’s position on various matters regarding the use of the Baikonur cosmodrome is complicating the execution of [...] -
Is Toyota Motors Doing Anything?
As most of the world reacts to defects in Toyotas that can cause them to accelerate suddenly, not much seems to be being said about it in Kazakhstan. In Astana, every other car is a Toyota including most government cars. If Toyotas are dangerous, one would think it would be making major news. So far [...]
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If You Can’t Get It at Home, You’re Gonna Go Looking
Tennis World has an article up about Kazakhstan’s buying of Russian tennis players. This is nothing new; I covered the purchase of Sesil Karatantcheva, a Bulgarian which has been going pretty well for the nation. And our recent medalist at Vancouver was also brought to Kazakhstan from Russia.
Tennis World’s interview with Evgeny Korolev is [...] -
Dear Kazakhstan Olympic Commitee
I went to your website to find out more information about Kazakh athletes. I hoped to find some interesting facts about them so I could write about them on my blog. I wanted to try to get an idea of who the stars were and generate some interest about Kazakhstan Winter Olympians in the world. [...]
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First Medal
Elena Krustaleva took the silver medal Thursday in the women’s 15km biathlon. She had a perfect shooting record and was just a little too slow to beat Tora Berger of Norway, who came in 20.7 seconds ahead.
Khrustaleva is from Krasnyorsk, Russia and until recently raced for Russia but Kazakhstan apparently bought her and the [...] -
Ten is Eleven
So obviously the big news out of Vancouver today is that Plushenko, coming out of retirement especially to compete in the 2010 Winter Olympics, took the silver medal and Evan Lysacek took the gold. Both skated beautifully and while some will complain that Plushenko got cheated, the Russian commentators on Eurosport seemed pretty happy that [...]
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Ded Moroz!
Happy New Year!
As many readers may know, New Year’s Eve in the former Soviet Union (and much of the Eastern world) is celebrated much like Westerners celebrate Christmas. Families gather together for a big meal and put up a fir tree with lots of decorations. Presents are given–not by Santa Claus but by Дед Мороз [...] -
The School System Explained
Nice post on the Kazakhstani School System I came across the other day.
Key points that would be interesting to foreigners (or even things I hadn’t quite figured out!):Most schools have two sessions of classes- Half the student study in the morning and half the students study in the afternoon. This is because there aren’t enough [...]
