JULY 12 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov sacked the country’s deputy defence minister four days after a blast at an arms depot in a town near Ashgabat killed scores of people. The government has said 15 people died but the opposition website chrono-tm.org said up to 200 people may have been killed.
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(News report from Issue No. 49, published on July 20 2011)
JULY 20 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – An earthquake struck the densely populated Ferghana Valley and killed at least 13 people, local media quoted Uzbekistan’s Emergencies Ministry as saying. The US Geological Survey said the earthquake measured 6.1 on the Richter scale and was a relatively shallow 18km below the surface.
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(News report from Issue No. 49, published on July 20 2011)
JUNE 23 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Central Asia is facing a drought that will not only hit cotton and food production but also heighten tension across the region, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said. UNDP said that Water levels are a third lower than average in important reservoirs in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 46, published on June 28 2011)
MAY 9 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh environmentalist said 12-15 dead seals have washed up on the shores of the Caspian Sea over the last week, media reported. In the past 10 years environmentalists have blamed offshore energy developments and overfishing for hundreds of seal deaths. The Kazakh government, though, has blamed viruses.
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(News report from Issue No. 39, published on May 9 2011)
MAY 1 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Five fairly strong earthquakes shook Almaty, the financial capital of Kazakhstan, in close succession. The US Geological Survey said the strongest earthquake measured 5.4 on the Richter scale. It was recorded around 76km north east of Almaty. No damage or deaths were reported.
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(News report from Issue No. 38, published on May 2 2011)
JAN. 19/24 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Strong earthquakes shook both Georgia and Tajikistan although neither caused major damage or deaths. A 5.3 magnitude earthquake in Georgia struck 30km south of Kutaisi, the country’s second largest city. In Tajikistan, a 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck about 350km east of Dushanbe.
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(News report from Issue No. 24, published on Jan. 24 2011)
JAN. 11 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – An accidental blast at an army base in Georgia killed three and injured 13 soldiers. The Georgian ministry of defence said a technical error had caused a mortar bomb to explode at the Krtsanisi base where the US trains Georgians before deployment to Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 23, published on Jan. 17 2011)
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DEC. 29 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an interview with RFE/RL, Tajikistan’s deputy health minister said a polio epidemic had been brought under control. There have been no new reported cases of polio in the southern region at the centre of the outbreak since July 4 after an intensive vaccination period. World Health Organisation said 29 people died from 458 cases of polio.
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(News report from Issue No. 21, published on Jan. 4 2011)
DEC. 15 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — A US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks revealed how in September 2008 a gas leak forced BP to evacuate 211 workers from one of its biggest oil drilling platforms in the Azeri sector of the Caspian Sea. The cable said BP tried to limit public information of the gas leak which shut down part of production at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field.
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(News report from Issue No. 20, published on Dec. 20 2010)
SEPT. 27 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan banned the export of buckwheat, a favourite cereal in the former Soviet Union, because of shortages caused by a summer drought. It also said the drought had hit its grain harvest which would only be 13.5m tonnes this year, the bottom end of previous forecasts.
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(News report from Issue No. 9, published on Sept. 30 2010)