JUNE 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – MPs in Kyrgyzstan resisted an attempt by the Ata-Meken party to impose stricter mining techniques at the Kumtor gold mine. Ata-Meken is part of the ruling coalition. Kumtor is owned by Toronto-based Centerra Gold. Kyrgyzstan has been arguing with Centerra over ownership of the mine.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan increased its gold reserves for the 32nd month in a row, the IMF said. Kazakhstan’s gold reserves measure 203.4 tonnes. Despite spending heavily to protect the tenge, the Kazakh Central Bank has maintained its policy of buying gold.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan increased exports of electricity to Afghanistan by a third in May compared to the same month in 2014, media reported quoting official statistics. This is important because international backers view Tajiksitan’s hydro-generated electricity as a decent export.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – MoneyGram International, a money wire transfer service, said that it had set up operations in Turkmenistan. MoneyGram’s entry into Turkmenistan will be boost to remittance flows which rely heavily on easy wire transfer services.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh Central Bank cancelled BTA’s banking licence, officially ending its banking activities. BTA, which had once been one of Kazakhstan’s biggest banks, merged with Kazkommertzbank earlier this year. It assumed a massive proportion of bad debt in the 2008/9 Global Financial Crisis.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JULY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Yaver Jamalov, Azerbaijan’s defence industry minister, said he wanted to increase the number of countries that Azerbaijan exported its weapons and ammunition to. Mr Jamalov said he had concluded a deal with Iraq’s government to supply hundreds of grenade launchers and mortars.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JUNE 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A Russian soldier was found stabbed to death in the city of Gyumri, Armenia, home to one of Russia’s largest overseas military bases. Media reported that another Russian soldier has been detained on suspicion of killing the man.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
JUNE 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan is paying former senior German politicians large salaries to whitewash its reputation in Europe, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported quoting emails it has seen from an Austria-based law firm. The magazine named former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, former president Horst Koehler and former interior minister Otto Schily.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
JUNE 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) -At least 19 people died after flash floods hit Tbilisi, smashing into houses, ripping up road and destroying city’s zoo
Torrential rain turned a small creek that runs through the city into a wild, uncontrollable river. It burst its banks and swept along recently paved and concreted areas into residential parts of Tbilisi.
Several animals escaped the flooded zoo, including lions, tigers, bears and panthers but dozens others died. A cornered tiger reportedly attacked and killed a man in a flooded warehouse on June 17. Police later shot dead the tiger.
The authorities ordered people to stay inside until they had re-captured all the animals. Video showed a hippo roaming through central Tbilisi before being hit with a tranquilliser dart and brought under control.
The carcasses of dead lions, bears and deer floated through flooded streets, past smashed cars caked with mud and houses missing walls.
This was one of the worst natural disaster to hit Tbilisi in living memory.
PM Irakli Garibashvili said around 200 people lost their homes and that the cost of repairing the city would be around 50m euro.
But the damage to Georgia’s prestige may be worse. People were quick to portion blame for the floods, many saying poor construction work had destroyed the river’s run-off area.
Nana Janashia, director of the Caucasus Environmental NGO Network (CENN), also said the non-existence of an emergency plan was also a problem.
“This was absolutely predictable and is the result of high rain precipitation, human impact and poor infrastructures dating back to Soviet times,” she said.
Others blamed former president Mikheil Saakashvili who initiated the construction of the new highway. In a 2009 article, the magazine Liberali said the construction of the highway could lead to potential disastrous floods.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
JUNE 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in west Kazakhstan handed the Karachaganak oil and gas project a fine of 7.3b tenge (roughly $40m) for excessive flaring, media reported quoting a court statement. Karachaganak’s shareholders are BG Group, Eni, Chevron, Lukoil and Kazmunaigas.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)