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The Regions This Week
July 6, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 13
Eurasia
Azerbaijan was hit by a massive blackout caused by an explosion at the Mingachevir Thermal Power Station. The country’s electricity system was reportedly overloaded as Azerbaijanis turned on their air conditioners during a sudden hot spell.
The Kazakh Senate ratified a bilateral agreement with China to construct the Chukurbulak dam on the Khorgos River, which borders the two countries. The new dam aims to stem mudflow and protect people living in the lower basin of the river.
A senior Iranian official accused Iran’s foreign enemies of modifying the weather in the country in order to create drought. Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization, a subdivision of the armed forces, also talked of the issues of ‘cloud-stealing’ and ‘snow-stealing’ but this was dismissed by an official from the Iranian Meteorological Organisation.
Mongolia's central bank received the IMF’s fourth tranche of funding, worth $36.91mn. The tranche is a part of a three-year IMF extended funding facility (EFF) agreement worth $434mn, which in turn is part of a $5.5bn IMF-led package, which helped rescue the country’s economy last year.
Afghanistan extradited four alleged supporters of rebel Tajik General Abdukhalim Nazarzoda
to Tajikistan. Nazarzoda, an ex-deputy defence minister and rebel general, was supposedly planning a coup and was killed in 2015 by the Tajik authorities in a shootout.
Iran is to allow private companies to export crude oil as part of its strategy to counter US sanctions. The Trump administration in the US is aggressively demanding that all countries stop importing Iranian oil from November.
Former Armenian defence minister Mikayel Harutyunyan was arrested after being charged
with overthrowing the constitutional order in a case relating to the violent dispersal of protests after the 2008 presidential election. Harutyunyan is one of several figures linked to Armenia’s Republican Party to have been detained in a series of probes in recent weeks.
The Turkmen authorities barred citizens under the age of 40 from travelling abroad. Previously the limit was 30, but more Turkmen citizens have been attempting to leave Turkmenistan amid
its continuously deteriorating economic and budgetary conditions.
Tbilisi mayor Kakha Kaladze argued that Georgia should introduce a ban on used car imports, calling the situation in the capital “a complete disaster”. Georgia and other countries from the Eastern Europe and Eurasia region are major importers of used cars, most of them from Western Europe.
Kyrgyzstan is undertaking negotiations with China to potentially construct a China-Kyrgyzstan- Uzbekistan railway, Kyrgyz President Sooranbai Jeenbekov revealed. The project seeks to be in line with China’s huge One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, which is aiming to transform parts
of Central Asia into transit zones with modern infrastructure for Chinese goods heading to Europe and vice versa.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) issued the third Uzbek soum-denominated bond on the London Stock Exchange, to expand lending for micro, small and medium sized enterprises in Uzbekistan.
Annual consumer price inflation in Kazakhstan slowed to a rate of 6.4% in June, slightly above the 6.2% experienced in May, according to figures released by the State Statistics Committee.
The rate is in line with National Bank of Kazakhstan expectations.