Marat of the Russian-language neweurasia blog presents a new episode of his statistical revelations:
I have read some statistics regarding supply of natural gas to households in the rural area of Kazakhstan. It happens that 88-92 percent of all households actually have access to such kind of facility.
I wondered - how come the percentage […]

Marat on the Russian-language blog writes that
68,000 children were born not in wedlock in 2006. That represented 47 percent of the total amount of newborn kids, 144,000. I looked at the previous years and found out that it was not too bad in 2006. For example, in 1999, 51 thousand children were given […]

slavasay writes [ru] about an unpleasant story, related to unethical comments in the Internet-broadcast of the Russian “Sport” TV channel:
Russian channel “Sport” organized a broadcast over the Internet. That’s cool — but they sometimes broadcast a technical part, the one that is not aired on the television. Commenters chat with each other and the […]

Below is translated post by Marat from the Russian-language blog.
There are several global players in international politics: Anglo-Saxon bloc (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and - sometimes, under certain circumstances - India), European Union, China, Russia, Japan and Islamic world.
What Kazakhstan has are natural resources, geopolitical positioning, population. These are our […]

Below is translation of Marat’s post from the Russian-language blog.
I looked through the archived data and found these figures interesting about Kazakh SSR:
1. Until early 1960s the housing construction was held primarily at the expense of the population: 70% of housing in 1946-50, some 60% in 1951-1955, and nearly 50% in 1956-1960
2. In 1980s, […]

Below is a translated post by Nurgeldy from the Russian-language blog.
Four new outdoor sculptures and several new fountains were opened in the northern Kazakhstan city of Kustanai this week. Three sculptures were male (a student, a metallurgist and a grain-grower) and only one female. Here she is, a girl talking on the cellphone. […]

Meanwhile sources in Gori informed us that local commuters are rubbed on Gori highway by Russian, Kazakhstan and Ossetian military.
Misinformation and online propaganda have been some of the key characteristics of the latest war in the Caucasus. The quote above illustrates that point quite well I find.
One the serious news front, Kazakhstan’s president Nazarbayev […]

Christoph, a photographer-friend of mine, accompanied me to Kazakhstan a few weeks back. Here are some of his impressions from Astana:

The new Independence Monument (91m high)