David Trilling
Tears welled up in Alexey Melnikov's eyes as a spaceship carrying three astronauts lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome several hours before dawn. The Russian-born, London-based computer programmer had wanted to see the breathtaking spectacle since he was a boy. As the rocket engines lit up the sky and shook varied VIPs into silence, here he was standing on the same stretch of steppe that saw Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin make history.
President Nursultan Nazarbayev is in Brussels putting the finishing touches to a landmark agreement with the European Union, cementing ties with Europe even as Astana pushes ahead to join the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union.
The Constitutional Court will today hear submissions regarding a freezing order issued against locally-held assets belonging to the former deputy chief of the Kazakh secret service, Rakhat Aliyev.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) held its two-day summit in Tajikistan's capital, Dushanbe, on Sep 11. SCO, an inter-governmental organization, founded in Shanghai on June 15, 2001, has China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as its members.
Judges refused on Monday to free former Kazakh oligarch and politician Mukhtar Ablyazov who has been held in France for 14 months. He is accused by Russia and Ukraine of massive financial fraud.
The 2004 Olympic baseball stadium in Athens is now a white elephant. Oslo has pulled out of the running for the 2022 Winter Olympics after the Norwegian government advised against hosting.
Aliyev is currently in an Austrian jail as the authorities consider whether he is really responsible for the murder of two bankers whose bodies were found in 40-gallon oil drums.
