A Uranium One sign that points to a 35,000-acre ranch owned by John Christensen, near the town of Gillette, Wyo. Uranium One has the mining rights to Mr. Christensen's property. Credit Matthew Staver for The New York Times

As oil-rich Kazakhstan votes for a president Sunday, the governing elite is pounding home a mantra of stability as fears percolate about the country's massive Russian minority taking inspiration from the Moscow-backed insurgency in Ukraine.

Since 2013, the nuclear energy arm of the Russian state has controlled 20 percent of America's uranium production capacity. Rosatom's acquisition of Toronto-based miner Uranium One Inc. made the Russian agency, which also builds nuclear weapons, one the world's top five producers of the radioactive metal and gave it ownership of a mine in Wyoming. 

Mitt Romney held nothing back when he was asked about a recent wave of allegations that hit Hillary Clinton's family foundation on Thursday. In an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Romney said one of the reports about the Clinton family's charitable organization details something that "looks like bribery."

Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the authorities don't even have to stuff the ballot boxes, their presidents have done everything they can to appear irreplaceable. In post-Soviet Central Asia, presidential elections are routine affairs. In a region where power has very seldom been transferred at the ballot box and where governments and opposition simply do not talk to one another, competitive elections have come to display some very paradoxical features.

The 74-year-old president is set to be reinstated by his loyal followers on Sunday, but the failure to consider a successor is making the outside world nervous. From nervous students to frail war veterans, state television anchors to professional sportspeople, one by one they climbed on to the stage to unleash breathless eulogies in honour of their leader.