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Nursultan Nazarbayev announces shock resignation in televised address, hands over power to speaker of upper house. Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev has abruptly announced his resignation, 29 years after taking office. In a televised address on Tuesday, the 78-year-old said he has taken the "difficult" decision to terminate his authority as president, but did not give a specific reason for the shock decision. "I have decided to end my duties as president," Nazarbayev said, before signing a decree terminating his powers from March 30. "This year I will have held the highest post for 30 years," he said. "As the founder...

In 2013, Rosatom, backed by the Russian state, acquired a Canadian uranium mining company, now called Uranium One, which has assets in the U.S. Uranium is a key material for making nuclear weapons. Through the deal, Russia is able to own about 20 percent of U.S. uranium production capacity. However, Colin Chilcoat, an energy affairs specialist who has written extensively about Russia's energy deals, said that the company only extracts about 11 percent of uranium in the U.S. The deal also “doesn’t allow for that uranium to be exported at all,” Chilcoat told Fox News. “It’s not like it’s leaving the...

Mukhtar Dzhakishev is by all accounts in miserable shape.Languishing in a “harsh” Kazakhstan prison colony that was once part of Stalin’s gulag system, he suffers from hypertension, hardened arteries and kidney disease likely triggered by a severe beating.“His life is constantly at risk,” one human-rights group warned in September, as it urged the international community to advocate on Dzakishev’s behalf.Largely unable to communicate with the outside world, the former head of Kazakhstan’s state uranium conglomerate has made one thing clear: he blames his arrest and 14-year prison term at least in part on a Canadian company’s corporate dealings.More specifically, Dzakishev...

ASTANA, March 11 (Reuters) - Kazakhstan, abandoning its usual balancing act to keep good ties with both the United States and Russia, blamed the dollar's dominance for global economic problems and argued for a new international currency. "The flaws of the existing global currency system lie at the heart of the current global crisis," said President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who last month proposed calling the new currency "acmetal", combining the words "acme" and "capital". "Its players are forced to abide by rules imposed on them by others. They are set by a narrow circle and often violate the majority's interests," he...

Also, Bill Clinton seems to have used his influence to aid a mining executive by praising a central Asian dictator (contrary to U.S. policy) and in return received a 31 million dollar donation for his foundation. That's pretty sleazy. It also makes Hillary Clinton the latest in a long line of female politicians hurt by their husbands' business dealings.

Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them. Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his...

Bill Clinton back at centre of ethics debateBy Alex Spillius Last Updated: 3:02am GMT 01/02/2008 Bill Clinton used his influence with the president of Kazakhstan to help a business friend gain a lucrative uranium mining deal, it has been claimed. Bill Clinton: influence The report in the New York Times will raise concerns about possible conflicts of interest that the former president could face if he returns to the White House as "first gentleman" and raised the spectre of the financial scandals that dogged the Clintons in the White House. Mr Clinton has already began cutting his links to Ron...

Kazakhstan Parliament Abolishes Presidential Term Limits on Nazarbayev By VOA News 18 May 2007 Lawmakers in Kazakhstan have voted to allow President Nursultan Nazarbayev to stay in office for an unlimited number of terms. Both the upper and lower houses of parliament Friday voted overwhelmingly in favor of amending the constitution to let Mr. Nazarbayev remain president as long as he chooses. The proposed amendment is an exception only for Mr. Nazarbayev. Future leaders will be limited to no more than two consecutive terms. Lawmakers also passed an amendment requested earlier this week by President Nazarbayev to reduce the presidential...

Today, President Bush spoke to the Reserve Officers Association at the Wardman Park Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C. Click here for the complete transcript. First Lady Laura Bush attended a ceremony to celebrate the completion of the National Garden in Washington, D.C. Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and other members of the cabinet joined President Bush in welcoming Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev to the White House. And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld continued his meeting with NATO defense ministers in Portoroz, Slovenia Enjoy your Friday visit to Sanity Island

... Within the country, the tension between the surging economy and stagnant politics is palpable. Nazarbayev, popularly referred to as "Papa," has used his unlimited powers to pursue liberal economic reforms with vigor, and maintains that economic growth and stability come ahead of political freedoms. Yet a political system that trumpets its commitment to development has grown too rigid to accommodate the very success it helped create. "Our main problem is our political system that hinges on one man," soberly admits Dariga Nazarbayeva, the eldest of Nazarbayev's three daughters, a Member of Parliament and a major influence in Kazakhstani politics....

When Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev visited Riga on July 18, the overriding topic of discussion was how best to send Kazakh oil to energy-hungry markets in Europe and Scandinavian via Latvia. Nazarbayev did his best to give the impression of a pragmatic leader unburdened by the political strains caused by the long-standing disputes between his closest ally -- Moscow -- and West European powers over energy issues. His time in Riga provided an impressive display of his multi-vector approach to interstate relations. Answering questions from Latvian journalists, Nazarbayev stressed that Kazakhstan has no intention of constructing a transportation route to...

The bodies of Altynbek Sarsenbaev, a co-chairman of the Naghyz Ak Zhol opposition party, his bodyguard, and his driver were found in the Almaty outskirts early today. The three were reportedly shot dead. A former information minister and a former ambassador to Russia, Sarsenbaev was a fierce critic of Kazakhstan's current regime.

ASTANA, Kazakhstan — As Kazakh voters went to the polls Sunday in an election that returned President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev to another seven-year term amid opposition complaints of irregularities, one of hundreds of international monitors dispatched to the polls wore a flowing beard and a black yarmulke. "I am probably the first rabbi to be invited as an election observer in a Muslim country, ever," said Avraham Berkowitz, head of the Federation of Jewish Communities of the Commonwealth of Independent States, who acted as Israel's delegate to the monitoring mission.

MOSCOW, November 10 (RIA Novosti) - Russian people described Belarusian and Kazakh presidents, Alexander Lukashenko and Nursultan Nazarbayev, as the most popular political leaders in the neighboring countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). According to a survey conducted by the Expert Community national institute, 52% of respondents favored Lukashenko, who the U.S. State Department has branded "the last dictator in Europe" and whose country now faces the possibility of sanctions being imposed by the European Union. A total of 47% opted for Nazarbayev, who has something of a reputation in Western countries as a strongman reformer overseeing a...

Another sign indicating that the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), founded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is disintegrating emerged in the Commonwealth summit held at Kazan. Turkmenistan is preparing to leave the 15 year old CIS by changing its status. Georgian President Mihail Saakashvili revealed that in the last hours of the summit, Turkmenistan government communicated its request for a change in its CIS permanent membership status. In the case that Turkmenistan breaks away from the CIS, it will be the first time since the three Baltic republics that a Central Asian Soviet will have obtained full independence....