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.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
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.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
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.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
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.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
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.”
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
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.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
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.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) -Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and the European Union will set up a working group to look at the best way to deliver Turkmen gas to European consumers, media reported quoting the European Commission. This is, probably, an important step forward for Turkmenistan which wants to send its gas across the Caspian Sea to Europe.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili met British PM David Cameron in Bratislava on the sidelines of a global security conference. Georgia wants to join NATO.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TBILISI – Georgia’s finance ministry said it will cut the national budget by 140m lari ($53m), 1.75% of the original budget, because of an economic slowdown.
Cuts will be made across government but hardest hit will be education, agriculture and the interior ministry.
PM Irakli Garibashvili said the government should have revised its budget earlier.
“Almost all the countries in the region had to revise their budgets because of the crisis,” he told parliament.
The government said that Georgia’s economy would grow by around 2% this year, far below the 5% initially anticipated.
A downturn in Russia’s economy and a slump in energy prices has hit Georgia hard. It is unclear if these cuts will be enough or more will follow.
The popularity of the ruling Georgian Dream has been slip- ping, in part because of the economic slowdown.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)