With nine months to go before Baku hosts the Eurovision pop-music competition, transparency concerns are arising about Azerbaijani government expenditures on the event.
A powerful earthquake registering 6.2 on the Richter scale struck Ferghana Valley early July 20, affecting Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The epicenter of the quake was about 45 kilometers south of the Uzbek city of Ferghana.
The killing of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of Afghan President Ahmed Karzai, was a shocking development -- even for Afghanistan, a country steeped in tragedy. But experts are unsure whether it will have a lasting impact on political developments.
Turkmenistan will host six visiting delegations from European Union member states in April.
Representatives from Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, Portugal, Romania and the United Kingdom will make separate visits to Ashgabat to drum up bilateral trade and energy sector cooperation, Russian news agency Regnum reported on April 5.
The European Bank FOR Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is to launch a new country strategy for Turkmenistan despite ongoing concerns about the country's pace of reform.
The bank's "core priority" will be private sector growth.
German carmaker Daimler AG will pay the US government $93.6 million in criminal fines and $91.4 million in civil penalties after pleading guilty to bribing government officials with cash and gifts in at least 22 countries including Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
