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Catastrophic floods have submerged large areas of south-western Russia and north-western Kazakhstan since April 3, 2024. To date, floods have affected 15 641 homes and 27 993 garden plots in Russia, prompting widespread evacuations and the declaration of state emergencies in affected areas. Nearly 111 200 people were evacuated in Kazakhstan and approximately 5 500 homes were flooded. In Russia, the hardest-hit area remains the Orenburg Region, where over 15 000 residential properties and 23 600 garden plots face flood threats. A federal state of emergency helps manage the crisis, as the Ural River’s water levels near Orenburg have slightly...

ASTANA, Kazakhstan — If the choice was death or a bullet to the leg, Yevgeny would take the bullet. A decorated hero of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Yevgeny told his friend and fellow soldier to please aim carefully and avoid bone. The tourniquets were ready. The pain that followed was the price Yevgeny paid for a new chance at life. Like thousands of other Russian soldiers, he deserted. “I joke that I gave birth to myself,” he said, declining to give his full name for fear of retribution. “When a woman gives birth to a child, she experiences very intense...

Tens of thousands of residents in the Russian city of Orenburg and neighbouring Kazakhstan have been told to evacuate immediately as flood waters inundate homes. -snip- Orenburg is home to half a million people, and the city's mayor Sergei Salmin said the situation was extremely dangerous. "Over the last 10 hours, the water level in the Ural River has risen by 40cm … these levels are dangerous," he wrote on the Telegram messenger app. He called on residents to gather essential items and to abandon their homes. Emergency workers said water levels in the Ural River were more than two...

Kazakhstan’s Defense Ministry has cancelled commemorative events, including a military parade, on May 9 to mark the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Political and economic factors appear to have played a role in the decision. Victory Day, as the May 9 celebration is known across the former Soviet Union, has become Russia’s primary state holiday in the years since 1991. Elsewhere in the former Soviet empire, the occasion has receded in significance. In Kazakhstan, a military parade hasn’t been on May 9 since 2019. Even so, commemorative events honoring veterans have continued to be staged across...

Kazakhstan has agreed to help Russia alleviate its chronic shortage of chicken eggs only to spark grumbling from domestic consumers in border areas who now say there is not enough for them to buy. The pledge of assistance arrived at a meeting on trade issues between Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Serik Zhumangarin and his Russian counterpart, Alexei Overchuk, in Astana on January 17. Eggs featured on the agenda. As the Russian state statistics service has reported, the price of the commodity soared by more than 61 percent last year, prompting the government in Moscow to adopt some radical fixes. One...

The ornaments contain the earliest known depiction of a Göktürk "khagan," who probably lived in the sixth century.Archaeologists in Kazakhstan have discovered two gold ornaments in a 1,500-year-old tomb that feature the earliest known depictions of the great khan, or "khagan," of the Göktürks — a nomadic confederation of Turkic-speaking peoples who occupied the region for around three centuries, according to an archaeologist who excavated the site...The finds are from the Eleke Sazy site near Kazakhstan's remote eastern borders with China, Mongolia and Russian Siberia, where Samashev and his colleagues have worked since 2016.The sixth-century Göktürk tomb holds the remains...

Hunter Biden once admonished a Mexican business magnate for ignoring him after he set up multiple meetings with Joe Biden during his vice presidency. Hunter Biden emailed Miguel Aleman Magnani, grandson of a former Mexican president and former CEO of Interjet, in February 2016 expressing his displeasure at Magnani for ignoring him. The pair dined together in Mexico shortly thereafter and Hunter Biden berated Magnani, apparently causing the Mexican businessman to leave the restaurant through the bathroom, The Washington Post reported. READ THE EMAIL: SCRBD pdf at link................ “We have so many great things to do together and I want...

Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, hosted routine talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Astana on November 9. At the customary, post-meeting press conference, Tokayev said little that was new, yet his delivery marked a notable departure from the past. He opened his remarks in Kazakh, not Russian. Tokayev’s rhetoric included the usual platitudes concerning the strength of bilateral relations, which he said were underpinned by “unshakable values of mutual respect and trust.” He went on to “confirm Kazakhstan is committed to the strategic direction of further strengthening comprehensive cooperation with Russia.” But in making top Russian officials in attendance, including...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is being mocked online for flubbing the name of the president of Kazakhstan during a formal meeting with the ally. -snip- videos posted on social media have centered on Putin, who has been a focus of controversy regarding his purported health issues, and his mispronunciation of Tokayev's name. Putin, surrounded by delegates at a large table and broadcast on Russian television, can be seen stuttering during introductory remarks. "Putin had a hard time pronouncing the name of the President of Kazakhstan," wrote Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, on X, formerly Twitter. "This...

Archaeologists Have Uncovered a Pyramid Belonging to the Scythian-saka Period in the Karaganda Region of Kazakhstan.The pyramid is located on a hill overlooking the Taldy River in the Shet district of Karaganda, which was excavated by archaeologists from Karaganda University over a period of 4 excavation seasons.According to the researchers, the pyramid is a mausoleum complex for a ruler from the Begazı Dandibay culture, a late Bronze Age culture that flourished during the last phase of the Andronovo period (2000–1150 BC).The structure is a pyramidal stepped mausoleum, which was constructed in a region of the Sari Arka steppes where communities...

Hamas representatives are in Moscow, according to Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. “I can also say and confirm that representatives of the relevant Palestinian movement are on a visit to Moscow,” she says in a briefing, reported by the Russian RIA Novosti outlet. The outlet had earlier reported that Hamas politburo member Moussa Abu Marzuk was leading the delegation. Zakharova says that Iranian deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri Kani is in Moscow as well.

The Pentagon disclosed that Chinese fighters have conducted more dangerous intercepts of American military aircraft in the last two years than that of the past decade. This is because China knows we are led by a very weak and compromised president who will do nothing to stop them. These incidents are a tool to show the world China can do what it wants to the United States and there isn't a damn thing we will do about it. China and Russia have sent fighters dangerously close to our aircraft during every presidential administration. One Chinese fighter even collided with an...

Relations between Kazakhstan and Russia, have deteriorated since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022... "Kazakhstan has unambiguously stated that it will follow the sanctions regime," Tokayev said following talks during an official visit to Berlin to meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Timothy Ash, an economist and associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at British think tank Chatham House, said the statement was significant and shows Moscow is losing influence. "Wow, huge move. Just shows weakening grip across region of Russia because of Putin's idiotic invasion of Ukraine. He lost Armenia in recent weeks on Russia's...

(at 10:42, video contains an ad Curiosity Stream, YouTube seems to have redacted from the transcript, which skips from 10:41 to 11:04)The Aral Sea: The Toxic Soviet Sea | 23:46Geographics | 1.05M subscribers | 1,782,979 views | February 13, 2020

Central Asian countries are attempting to curb Russian recruiting of their citizens for its war in Ukraine, while Moscow seeks to avoid stirring public discontent with another large wave of domestic mobilization. So far this year, Kyrgyzstan has sentenced one citizen to 10 years in prison and detained another for allegedly serving as mercenaries. In Kazakhstan at the end of July, a prosecutor's office in a region bordering Russia warned citizens about the proliferation of online ads urging them to join the war, noting stiff legal penalties for doing so. This came a few months after Kazakhstan's National Security Committee...

President Joe Biden’s role as “the brand” for son Hunter’s lucrative international influence-peddling may have benefited him directly, according to mounting evidence from the first son’s abandoned laptop. Newly revealed bank records released by the House Oversight Committee show that the president’s family and allies hauled in a staggering $20 million from foreign sources in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and China, some of whom met personally with Biden while he served as vice president. On Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland named Delaware US Attorney David Weiss as special counsel in the ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings — and...

Archaeologists From the Eurasian National University (Enu) Have Uncovered a Pyramidal Structure at the Kyrykungir Archaeological Site. Kyrykungir is a funerary complex near the village of Toktamys, located in the Abay region of Kazakhstan.Previous excavations since 2014 have identified clusters of burial mounds from the Hun and Saka periods, containing funerary deposits of ceramic vessels, food offerings, and bronze beads.In a press announcement by the Eurasian National University, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a hexagonal pyramidal that dates from the early Bronze Age around 2,000 BC...According to the researchers, the structure is hexagonal in shape, with each of the six...

The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee dismissed Chairman James Comer’s Wednesday morning release of bank records that appear to show Hunter Biden was paid millions by Eastern European oligarchs. The 19-page memo, which provides screenshots of redacted financial records, says millions of dollars in payments came from Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina and Kazakhstani oligarch Kenes Rakishev. The records also suggest Joe Biden attended dinners with Baturina, Rakishev and a representative from Burisma while he was vice president.

Joe Biden just solidified Russia’s near-monopoly on global uranium production. Using the Antiquities Act of 1906, Biden declared a national monument on 1 million acres of uranium-rich Arizona land, rendering hundreds of uranium deposits unmineable. America spends $1 billion annually on Russian uranium. U.S. nuclear reactors use uranium that comes from the Russian nuclear company Rosatom, which also supplies missile fuel to Russia’s military. Domestic uranium production has bipartisan support, as did the ban on Russian oil and gas imports in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine. The Senate last week added an almost-unanimous amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act...

The special counsel investigation into Donald Trump secured a search warrant of the former president’s Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, according to a newly unsealed court filing. The search was so secret that Twitter was barred from telling Trump the search warrant had been obtained for his account, and Twitter was fined $350,000 because it delayed producing the records sought under the search warrant. Twitter and special counsel Jack Smith’s office spent several months litigating the question of whether Trump should be told about the search warrant.