A grandiose project is rising in a sleepy corner of Central Asia, where southeastern Kazakhstan meets northwestern China. Officials in Astana hope the multi-billion dollar initiative can transform a patch of desert into an engine of growth.
BTA Bank, Kazakhstan's biggest lender before its nationalization and default two years ago, may have underestimated its bad-loan total and may require more government aid or risks being broken up.
ALMATY, May 28 (Reuters) - Opposition activists in Kazakhstan called on the government on Saturday to stop Chinese investment in the country's natural resources, saying Beijing could be preparing a land grab in Central Asia. Several hundred people gathered in Almaty, the country's largest city, for an officially sanctioned rally against Chinese expansion into Kazakhstan, a vast former Soviet republic holding 3 percent of the world's recoverable oil reserves.
OSKEMEN, Kazakhstan -- Kazakhstan's most prominent human rights activist, who is serving a four-year prison term over a fatal road accident, has been released from a low security labor camp on furlough for the first time, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports.
Four years ago, Kazakhstan's foreign minister summoned the U.S. ambassador to a meeting in Astana, the Kazakh capital, to warn that a family dispute between the president and his son-in-law, two of the country's most powerful men, had boiled over.
Mukhtar Ablyazov is accused of running one of the biggest frauds in history
BTA Bank, Kazakhstan's biggest lender before the global credit crisis, had a loss in the first four months of the year, the nation's financial regulator said.
