KZBlog

Category archive for ‘News’

• Unrest

  Chris Merriman has a good summary of recent events in Kazakhstan including the two people who set themselves on fire in public buildings, the car bomb, and now the killing of two policeman in Aktobe. On the latter, there’s a little more information out now. According to Azattyq (RFE/RL), around midnight on June 30th a [...]

  7/04/11 • (0)

• The Sting of Criticism

  Sting, who was scheduled to play tonight as part of the Astana Day festivities, has cancelled his engagement in Kazakhstan after Amnesty International apprised him of the situation with striking oil workers in West Kazakhstan: Amnesty International recently apprised Sting about the situation in Kazakhstan regarding the repression and crackdown against oil workers, their union [...]

  7/04/11 • (1)

• Rehashing the Contador-Astana Feud

  In researching my last post, I reread a bunch of articles on why Contador left Astana. Although there were issues when Armstrong was riding with them regarding pay and of course, the team almost lost its license at one point, it looks like mens sports equipment was the big issue or the straw that broke [...]

  6/23/11 • (0)

• Team Saxo Astana Bank?

  L’Equipe, a French sports website, has an interesting article up. They claim that the CFO of Team Astana wants to merge with Saxo Bank or Liquigas. What’s interesting about this story is that apparently no one else on Team Astana knew anything about this, although L’Equipe claims that Aidar Makhmetov, newly appointed as chief financial [...]

  6/23/11 • (0)

• In Every Joke There’s a Bit of Truth

  Someone in the Kazakhstan government just got fired and blacklisted. Last week, the Parliament of Kazakhstan was to ratify the Customs Union between Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Russia which was agreed upon last year and will go into full effect this July. However the signing was delayed when it was discovered that someone mixed up Vladimir [...]

  6/21/11 • (0)

• More on the Carbomb in Astana

  Found a good report on the car bombing of the KNB detention center in Astana that occurred on 24 May of this year, including some disturbing details and photographs of the damage. Apparently the blast was strong enough that neighbors 50-60 meters away found bits of steel Buildings in the area were also damaged, with [...]

  6/20/11 • (0)

• Self-Immolation Protest in Astana

  According to Kazakhstan Today, this morning, a woman set herself on fire in the public reception of Nur-Otan in Astana. There’s not a lot of official information out yet, but apparently she was protesting the conviction of her son. And she is apparently alive and in the hospital. A comment on zakon.kz claims that the [...]

  6/20/11 • (0)

• Grandfather’s Google

  Either because of the fuss made over it, or because of a genuine legal issue, Kazakhstan will allow Google to use google.kz. Google wrote a post saying that Kazakhstan had asked them to shut down google.kz or move the servers physically to Kazakhstan. An update on the Google blog post now says that the law [...]

  6/19/11 • (0)

• MPs Too Busy to Pay

  I’ve mentioned before the phenomenon in Kazakhstan that people don’t pay their utility bills. Often, when I complain about this, people tell me that those who don’t pay are too poor. However when I see my neighbors driving Porsche Cayennes and new BMWs (or reporting robberies of 5 computers from their apartment), I find it [...]

  6/16/11 • (0)

• Google.kz Equals Google.com

  Following a new law in Kazakhstan that all sites with a .kz domain must have its servers physically located inside Kazakhstan’s borders, Google announced that it will redirect google.kz to google.com. In blog post accusing the government of Kazakhstan of trying to restrict the Internet, Bill Coughran, SVP, Research & Systems Infrastructure, wrote: Some governments, [...]

  6/13/11 • (1)

«Older Entries
Newer Entries»

Page optimized by WP Minify WordPress Plugin