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The Regions This Week
June 7, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 7
Eurasia
Azerbaijani airline AZAL scrapped a $1bn con- tract with Boeing to acquire 10 737 MAX jets. The flag carrier’s move follows the fatal crashes involving the aircraft in Ethiopia and Indonesia and the subsequent grounding of them worldwide while Boeing deals with safety concerns.
Quality of life rallies continued in Kazakhstan ahead of the June 9 snap presidential election. Dozens of women rallied in the Kazakh capital, Nur-Sultan, urging the government to fulfill its promises to provide improved social benefits and decent housing for single mothers and families with many children.
Some 1,879,413 people have left Turkmenistan within the last 10 years on a permanent basis, opposition-run news website Chronicles of Turk- menistan reported, citing government figures re- vealed by Radio Azatlyk. The figures were suppos- edly classified by the Turkmen government, which worries that the revelation would “discredit” the regime’s rule.
Russia backed Japan’s plan to play a role
in helping to resolve the stand-off between Iran and the US, an official in Tokyo said after a meeting of the Japanese and Russian foreign and defence ministers in Tokyo.
The World Bank kept its projections for economic growth in Central Asian nations unchanged in its just released latest Global Economic Prospects report.
Uzbekistan expressed an interest in hosting the women’s football Asian Cup in 2022, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) said. Uzbek authori- ties likely see the showpiece as an opportunity to promote tourism. However, international sports events of this scale within the region have often amounted to little more than vanity projects.
Iran and Turkey finalised an agreement to re- start direct passenger train services between Ankara and Tehran, News.am reported. It is not clear why the service was cancelled in the first place, but it is likely that it was down to previous political tensions that occurred before the rap- prochement seen between the two neighbours in more recent times.
Output at Kazakhstan’s giant Kashagan oil field reached an all-time high of 400,000 barrels per day (bpd), Reuters reported citing three sources familiar with production data. The surge in output follows the completion of maintenance works at the field in May. Before maintenance, production stood at approximately 330,000-340,000 bpd.
Kyrgyz security services arrested a close ally of former president Atambayev. The ex-chief of the Kyrgyz presidential office's department for judicial system reform, Manasbek Arabayev, was arrested on corruption charges.
MPs in Armenia’s parliament unanimously ap- proved amendments to the country’s “Lotteries” law which prohibit bookmakers’ activities in the capital Yerevan from 2020. The project sparked a protest from employees of the GoodWin company who mounted street protests saying further crack- downs on brick and mortar betting parlours could put thousands out of work across the country.
The Uzbek government issued a resolution approving the sale of its 100% stake in Fer- ghana Oil Refinery to Indonesia’s PT Trans Asia Resources, UzDaily news agency reported. PT TransAsia will modernise it using its own funds and then invite in other foreign investors inter- ested in operating the refinery, the chairman of state-run oil and gas producer Uzbekneftegaz, Bahodirjon Sidikov, told journalists at a confer- ence in Tashkent