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WASHINGTON — House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer says an informant file that he’s seeking from the FBI links President Biden to a $5 million bribery scheme while he was vice president. Comer (R-Ky.) revealed the size of the alleged bribe for the first time Wednesday in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, threatening him with contempt proceedings if he doesn’t share the file pursuant to a May 3 subpoena. The informant tip is dated June 30, 2020, Comer wrote — an additional clue in the mysterious allegation that triggered a guessing game due to the Biden family’s extensive...

On Feb. 3, long-time Trump associate Felix Sater filed a cross-complaint in a New York federal court. The complaint alleges that Russian and Kazakhstan-connected individuals and entities conducted “a shadow intelligence operation of Sater and Trump for the purpose of manufacturing information to harm Donald Trump politically,” including by providing Christopher Steele a PowerPoint presentation riddled with lies Steele later fed to the FBI. Sater’s cross suit comes nearly three years after the City of Almaty, Kazakhstan, and BTA Bank filed suit against Sater, two of the companies he owned, a former business associate, and that associate’s LLCs, in City...

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...

An international team of researchers... In a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution... found that the indigenous populations of inner Eurasia are very diverse in their genes, culture and languages, but divide into three groups that stretch across the area in east-west geographic bands... This vast area can also be divided into several distinct ecological regions that stretch in largely east-west bands across Inner Eurasia, consisting of the deserts at the southern edge of the region, the steppe in the central part, taiga forests further north, and tundra towards the Arctic region. The subsistence strategies used by indigenous groups...

First-of-its-kind courtroom testimony here has corroborated allegations that the Chinese government has built a network of internment camps in western China where Muslim minorities are held without charge for “reeducation.” Sayragul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh Chinese national, said she crossed from China’s Xin­jiang region to Kazakhstan without proper papers after being forced to work at a camp where around 2,500 ethnic Kazakhs were being held for indoctrination. “In China, they call it a political camp, but really it was a prison in the mountains,” she told a court last month packed with Kazakh villagers, reporters and a few tight-lipped Chinese...

Most children, Asher Svidensky says, are a little intimidated by golden eagles. Kazakh boys in western Mongolia start learning how to use the huge birds to hunt for foxes and hares at the age of 13, when the eagles sit heavily on their undeveloped arms. Svidensky, a photographer and travel writer, shot five boys learning the skill - and he also photographed Ashol-Pan

Tazhayakov was allowed to return to the U.S. from Kazakhstan in January despite not having a valid student visa, a federal law enforcement official told The Associated Press. His student visa status had been terminated because he was academically dismissed from the university, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity... Kadyrbayev, an engineering major

WASHINGTON (AP) — One of three college students arrested Wednesday in the Boston Marathon bombings case was allowed to return to the United States from Kazakhstan in January despite not having a valid student visa, a federal law enforcement official told The Associated Press. Authorities charged the student — a friend and classmate of one of the men accused of setting off the deadly explosions — with helping after the attacks to remove a laptop and backpack from the bombing suspect's dormitory room before the FBI searched it. The government acknowledged that U.S. Customs and Border Protection was unaware that...

(CNN) -- The number of people potentially embroiled in the Boston Marathon bombings case grew Wednesday to include friends of surviving suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Not much is known yet about the three 19-year-old men -- Azamat Tazhayakov, Dias Kadyrbayev and Robel Phillipos. But here is what CNN has learned so far. All started at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth in 2011, along with Tsarnaev. Each is accused of removing items from Tsarnaev's dorm room after the April 15 attack, which killed three people and wounded more than 260.

Nothing more than a tweet from the Boston Police Department;s official account, but that’s spreading like wildfire on Twitter — for understandable reasons: This makes it seem as though Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev weren’t self-radicalized lone wolves after all.  We’ll update as more information becomes available.Update: It’s no hack on the Twitter account, either. We’ll see what the BPD has to say next….Update: CBS Boston has this report, which doesn’t go much farther than the tweet: Boston police say three additional suspects have been taken into custody in Boston Marathon bombings investigation.Their names have not been released.  Police said more...

Two suspects who have been taken into custody in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings drove a car with “Terrorista #1″ license plates. Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev were reportedly arrested, along with one other person, for allegedly making false statements and obstructing justice during the federal investigation into Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, officials said Wednesday.

Three new suspects have been charged in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing, two for conspiring to get rid of their friend's incriminating backpack filled with gutted fireworks after learning he was a suspect in the April 15 terror attack, and another for lying to investigators, according to an FBI affidavit released Wednesday. Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakova both 19-year-old natives of Kazakhstan and friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at UMass-Dartmouth, allegedly went to Tsarnaev's dorm and took a laptop, the backpack and some Vaseline that may have been used in making the deadly pressure cooker bombs that killed three and...

Two Kazakh men and a third man have been arrested by federal authorities in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings, a law enforcement official familar with the case said this morning. The two men, Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, came to America from the Central Asian nation to study at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was also enrolled. The law enforcement official did not release the name of the third person arrested. … The White House and law enforcement authorities have previously suggested that the Tsarnaevs may have acted alone without clear ties to foreign governments...

BOSTON —Three more people have been taken into custody in connection with the Marathon bombing case, according to Boston police. Two of those in custody, Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, both originally from Kazakhstan, were friendly with bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, according to the men's attorney. The third suspect has not been named. ABC News reports that the three are college students who may have helped the Tsarnaev brothers after the bombings by throwing away possible evidence, including a backpack full of fireworks that was in the University of Massachusetts/Dartmouth dorm room of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The three people are expected...

Three taken into custody believed to be college students who helped Dzhokhar Tsarnaev cover up for the bombing after the fatal blasts Boston police say there is no threat to public safety Boston police announced on Wednesday that three new suspects were arrested in connection to the marathon bombing and they are thought to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's roommates who helped him cover his tracks after the fatal blasts.  The Boston Police Department were the first ones to report the arrest over their Twitter feed, and The Boston Globe claimed that the three people in custody were college students and the...

New Bedford police said this evening that three people had been taken into custody in their city as part of the bombing investigation. New Bedford Police Lieutenant Robert Richard said his department assisted federal investigators in executing a search warrant at a home on Carriage Drive in New Bedford, about 10 minutes from the campus of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where Tsarnaev was a student. Richard said the FBI took two men and a woman into custody. “They appeared to be either fellow college students or fellow residents,” he said. Richard said Tsarnaev may have been affiliated with...

Lost in the shuffle over the last few days has been the story of the two students re-arrested in New Bedford after the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Friday. Originally detained in their apartment in the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect, the FBI and DHS left shortly after Tsarnaev’s capture. They returned a few hours later, however, this time to arrest two men as a consular vehicle from a then-undisclosed nation picked up two women at the same time.Late yesterday, the FBI and DHS announced that the two Kazakhs had been arrested for visa violations, but that update...

Full Title:*****************************************************Owners of 'Terrorista #1' BMW license plate revealed as the SAME friends pictured with the Boston bomber in Times Square***************************************** Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev are from Kazakhstan They were classmates of bombing suspect Dzhokhar TsarnaevDzhokhar may have slept at their house on the night of the bombingThey've been in custody since last Saturday and a lawyer says they are 'shocked' by the allegations against their friend Friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev arrested last week who cruised around in a car with the ‘Terrorista #1’ license plate have also been revealed to be two of the group of friends recently...

Kazakhs get loan to save Aral Sea By Natalya Antelava BBC News, Aral Sea The sea's retreat spells disaster for local people The Kazakhstan government has secured a multi-million dollar loan from the World Bank to help save the Aral Sea. The money will be used to implement the second stage of a project aimed at saving the northern part of the sea. The United Nations has said the disappearance of the Aral is the worst man-made environmental disaster. But this new project could mean that at least part of the Aral - once the world's fourth largest inland body...