Even if the evidence isn’t overly convincing, apparently many residents of Astana and Kostanai reported seeing a slow-moving glowing ball in the sky between 7:30 and 7:45am, the 28th. Officials think it was likely a rocket taking off from Baykanour. Apparently the Russians don’t always tell them when a rocket takes off (although so many rocket launches get press attention). However officials are unable to explain why people in Pavlodar claimed to have also seen a UFO the week before.

If it was a UFO, I just hope it doesn’t have a ten-foot tall robot with it that can destroy metal and shut off electricity from the whole planet.

Apparently a circus owner from Kostanai came to Karaganda to buy a lion for his circus. That’s not unusual; there’s a zoo in Karaganda. He picked him up in a Gazelle, which is a big moving van style truck. And the lion was locked in a cage in the back of the Gazelle. It’s kind of funny to find a lion inside a gazelle instead of the other way around, but that’s still not newsworthy. The circus owner came home with the lion late, which is also not interesting. Karaganda is a good drive away from Kostanai, so it might be expected that the driver wouldn’t be able to do it all in one day and get home for dinner time. Now dear reader, take a minute and think what you would do in this situation. You have a lion in the back of your truck and you come home late at night. Would you park the truck, leaving the lion in the back, and just go home?. Because that’s what happened. The lion was discovered the next day by another car owner who alerted the police. It is unclear whether the owner of the parking lot will be charged for the extra security.

Interestingly, a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior said, “The cage containing the predator was locked, and the lion was calm,” and there is no indication that the circus owner will face any kind of punishment. So I guess it’s not illegal to leave wild animals out all night unmonitored.

According to his press release, this program does not translate your name, but transliterates by using the closest corresponding Latin letters to the Japanese spelling of your name. Anyone who has studied Japanese and wants to explain how Ilya becomes Kitafuka or Linda turns into Zukitoteka, please leave a comment.

This is, I believe the first iPhone app made in Kazakhstan! Krotov founded his company, Korotoff Republic for the express purpose of marketing iPod apps; in the press release, Krotov says:

Your name in Japanese was realized to explore the mechanism of adding and promotion in app store…With their strong blend of design and development skills, Korotoff Republic’s passion is to craft elegant, easy-to-use applications for the iPhone platform.

So we look forward to more interesting things in the future for the iPhone and the iPod.

iPods are sold in Kazakhstan for around $500 in Mac stores, but iPhones, which cost around $1000, are sold in many electronics and mobile phone shops. There doesn’t appear to be any documentation on Apple’s websites about a license to sell in Kazakhstan or links to Kazakh stores so the legality of the iPhones especially is highly questionable! That has not stopped iPhones from becoming the hot new trend in Kazakhstan among young people.