Looks an awful lot like W, IJS.
Once you see it you cannot unsee it.
Kekistan….
KAZAKHSTAN TO RENAME CAPITAL CITY NURSULTAN, AFTER AUTHORITARIAN LEADER PRAISED BY TRUMP
day after Kazakhstan’s authoritarian leader Nursultan Nazarbayev resigned after 30 years in power, the country’s parliament voted to rename the capital, Astana, after him.
The decision to rename Astana, a city replete with futuristic architecture in the middle of the world’s largest steppe, after the only leader an independent Kazakhstan has ever known, was floated by the country’s new interim President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev shortly after Nazarbayev’s resignation.
President Donald Trump has praised Nazarbayev's leadership skills and said the country's transformation under his rule was a "miracle," according to the Kazakh government's readout of a phone call between the two leaders. The Kazakh leader visited the White House last year, and the two countries agreed to expand their economic ties.
Meanwhile, the organization Human Rights Watch said that Nazarbayev's Kazakhstan "heavily restricts freedom of assembly, speech, and religion, and torture remains a serious problem."
The country’s lower house of parliament quickly voted in favor of the proposed name change on Wednesday, and the decision to rename Astana was made official around 24 hours after Nazarbayev surprised the world with his departure. Astana will now be named Nursultan, after the man who ruled the country from the Soviet era until the present day.
The country has already changed the name of its capital several times since it emerged as an independent nation, in the 1990s. But the decision nevertheless marks an era of change in Kazakhstan, one of the former republics of the Soviet Union whose modern identity is still forming.
“This act that is meant to honor Nazarbayev also reveals the inextricable link that developed between Kazakhstan's post-Soviet state-building, political identity, and the leader's own personal rule,” Alexander Cooley, an expert on Eurasia at Columbia University's Harriman Institute, told Newsweek. “At first glance, Kazakhstan's succession plan appears to be a well-planned and sequenced transition of power; but the country faces problems of growing social inequality, uneven modernization, and an increasingly complex set of challenges in managing relations with its major neighbors Russia and China."
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Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev announces his resignation, after 30 years in power, during a televised address on March 19. A day after the authoritarian leader stepped down, the country’s parliament voted to rename Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, after him.
GETTY IMAGES
Despite Nazarbayev’s resignation from the presidency, the 78-year-old will not disappear entirely from the public eye. He has been formally named “Leader of the Nation,” and will maintain his position as the head of the country’s ruling party and of Kazakhstan’s security council. Tokayev, the new interim president, has pledged to consult with Nazarbayev on important matters until elections are held in April 2020.
Meanwhile, Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, was immediately elected as the speaker of the upper house of parliament, one of the most powerful positions in the country, heightening speculation she could eventually be her father’s successor.
“It's a big moment for Kazakhstan and for Central Asia,” Nate Schenkkan, an expert on the former Soviet Union at the organization Freedom House, told Newsweek about Nazarbayev’s resignation. “In theory it should mark a changing of the guard as the last of the precollapse leaders exits office. But in practice it looks more like the institutionalization of a new type of managed succession, whereby the exiting leader and his family maintains privileges and status, and the same elite continues to rule the country.”
“Of course, nothing is guaranteed, and every transition, no matter how controlled, opens up new opportunities and risks,’ Schenkkan added.
https://www.newsweek.com/kazakhstan-capital-astana-nursultan-nazarbayev-praised-trump-1369403
The mineral industry of Kazakhstan is one of the most competitive and fastest growing sectors of the country. Kazakhstan ranks second to Russia among the countries of the CIS in its quantity of mineral production. It is endowed with large reserves of a wide range of metallic ores, industrial minerals, and fuels, and its metallurgical sector is a major producer of a large number of metals from domestic and imported raw materials. In 2005, its metal mining sector produced bauxite, chromite, copper, iron, lead, manganese, and zinc ores, and its metallurgical sector produced such metals as beryllium, bismuth, cadmium, copper, ferroalloys, lead, magnesium, rhenium, steel, titanium, and zinc. The country produced significant amounts of other nonferrous and industrial mineral products, such as alumina, arsenic, barite, gold, molybdenum, phosphate rock, and tungsten. The country was a large producer of mineral fuels, including coal, natural gas, oil, and uranium. The country's economy is heavily dependent on the production of minerals. Output from Kazakhstan's mineral and natural resources sector for 2004 accounted for 74.1% of the value of industrial production, of which 43.1% came from the oil and gas condensate extraction. In 2004, the mineral extraction sector accounted for 32% of the GDP, employed 191,000 employees, and accounted for 33.1% of capital investment and 64.5% of direct foreign investment, of which 63.5% was in the oil sector. Kazakhstan's mining industry is estimated at US$29.5 billion by 2017.
Kazakhstan's mining industry worth almost $30 billion by 2017
Kazakhstan's mining industry value is set to soar in the next four years, reaching US$29.5 billion by 2017, slightly down from previous forecasts, due mainly to the recent overall decline in commodity prices, says a newly-published report by Business Monitor.
Growth will be led almost exclusively by the coal, gold and copper sectors, which together account for the majority of the value of the Central Asian nation's mining industry.
Coal remains one of the core industries for Kazakhstan, employing around 40,000 people only in the mineral-rich province of Karaganda, which yield more than 17 million tons of coal in the first 7 months of 2013.
"New deposits Zhalyn and Kumyskuduk are being developed now. Karagandagiproshakht Institute has prepared a package plan of development of the mining industry in Karaganda until 2020," governor Oblast Baurzhan Abdishev was quoted as saying last August.
Copper production is also a bright spot in the country, given aggressive expansion plans by London-based miner Kazakhmys (LON:KAZ) and giant Rio Tinto's (ASX, LON:RIO) commitment to invest $100 million in exploring northern Kazakhstan for copper.
Some of the forecasted mining boom is already becoming evident. A study published by PwC last week showed that the nation was second in the list of major merger and acquisitions this year, with Kazak billionaires, along with the Republic of Kazakhstan, representing the second and third largest transactions during the period involving a $4.6 billion stake in Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. (LON:ENRC).
The Republic of Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country by land area and it is bigger than all Western Europe.
According to data provided by the Embassy of Kazakhstan to the U.S. and Canada, the Asian country holds the second largest uranium, chromium, lead, and zinc reserves, as well as the third largest manganese deposits and the world’s No. 5 copper reserves.
The country is also said to rank in the top ten for iron, and gold, it’s a well-known diamonds exporter and holds the 11th largest proven reserves of both petroleum and natural gas. In fact, FT.com reported Monday that the giant Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea, in which it was announced last weekend that China was taking a stake, could catapult Kazakhstan into the top five global oil exporters.
http://www.mining.com/kazakhstans-mining-industry-worth-almost-30-billion-by-2017-75033/