Kazakhstan

A new opinion poll offers good news for Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev: his approval ratings remain in the stratosphere as the country’s economy perks up after two years of doom and gloom.

After seven years of legal wrangling, trial postponements, and efforts by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev to control its political implications, the multimillion-dollar "Kazakhgate" bribery scandal is over.

An escalating row between a Kazakh gold company’s old and new owners has tarnished the image of one of the country’s most dazzling commercial prizes. The scandal is casting doubt over the company’s future and has sent foreign investors into a tailspin.

As the center of Kazakhstan's energy sector, the city of Atyrau plays an important role in the country's economic success. But you wouldn’t necessarily know it by looking at many of the city’s neighborhoods.

Kazakhstan has opened a new university in the capital, Astana, with ambitious aims of eventually offering a world-class education to 20,000 students per year and of ending the practice of sending the country’s best and brightest abroad to study.

Kazakhstan has achieved a cherished foreign policy goal, securing a commitment to host an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe summit this fall.

This 12-year-old girl isn't doing her schoolwork. In fact, she says she has missed months of classes. That's because nearly every hour of her day is spent working in the tobacco fields of Kazakhstan alongside her parents, who are migrant laborers from neighboring Kyrgyzstan.

In early July, Kazakstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev presided over the opening of the latest addition to Astana's growing list of monumental structures. The complex, known as Khan Shatyr, is a recreational center for the people of Kazakhstan that promises a year-round "outdoor" active life for a city caught in the extreme climate of the Kazakh steppe.

Having already been pummeled by rising fuel prices and political instability in recent months, the creation of a Customs Union among Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia threatens to deal yet another economic blow to Kyrgyzstan, and is exerting pressure on Bishkek to decide whether to cast its lot with Moscow or the West.

When Kazakhstan assumed the 2010 chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), officials in Astana touted their country’s capabilities as a regional diplomatic trouble-shooter.