Kazakhstan Olympic weightlifter Chinshanlo secretly marries a Chinese. Kanye blasted by human rights group for accepting Kazakhstan pay. Chinese President Xi Jinping: China’s slower economic growth a conscious choice by the government.

Tengrinews - Kazakhstan Olympic weightlifter Chinshanlo secretly marries a Chinese - The athlete registered her marriage in Almaty several months ago. According to her, she met her husband a long time ago, they used to do weightlifting together in China. While she was in Kazakhstan they only met during vacations and communicated via the internet the rest of the time.

Sowetan - Kanye blasted by human rights group for accepting Kazakhstan pay - Kanye West has been blasted for accepting a £1.9 million pay day to perform in Kazakhstan, which Human Rights Watch claim has a ''serious and deteriorating human rights situation''.

Bloomberg - Chinese President Xi Jinping: China’s slower economic growth a conscious choice by the government - China would “rather bring down the growth rate to a certain extent in order to solve the fundamental problems” hindering long-run development, Xi said in a written interview yesterday with media outlets from Russia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, according to a transcript distributed by the official Xinhua News Agency.

The Guardian - Bubonic plague outbreak feared in Central Asia

Global Voices - Kazakhstan: Script Reform Is ‘Hardly Possible at All’ - As Kazakhstan prepares for a highly controversial shift from Cyrillic script to Latin alphabet, its netizens are keen to note that a similar reform implemented years ago by Uzbekistan has not been very successful. Reflecting on her recent trip to Uzbekistan, Margarita Bocharova writes [ru]: