“Daughter of Kazakhstan's President Appointed Deputy Prime Minister”, “FC Astana's group stage debut shows how far Kazakh football has come”, “Astana, Almaty among TOP-10 popular CIS cities”

thediplomat.com. “Daughter of Kazakhstan's President Appointed Deputy Prime Minister" - In Kazakhstan, it seems, there are second chances for daughters tainted by political scandal. After a few years lying low, Dariga Nazarbayeva, the eldest daughter of Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, has moved into the political spotlight once more. Last week Nazarbayev appointed Nazarbayeva as deputy prime minister. As Joanna Lillis noted on Eurasianet, a specific reason for the appointment has not been identified. Many view the move as potentially part of the 75-year-old president's succession plans — though that, too, is speculation.

nytimes.com. “Why Russians Hate America. Again" - ON a warm August evening, I found myself sitting with three educated young Russians at the Beverly Hills Diner, a chain restaurant whose gaudy décor includes human-size figures of Porky Pig and Marilyn Monroe. They had invited me to join their table, inside a green convertible car, after I had asked a few reporter-type questions about their country. But all talk of Russia kept leading to America.

inform.kz. “FC Astana's group stage debut shows how far Kazakh football has come" - Kazinform offers its readers an article on FC Astana's group stage debut shows how far Kazakh football has come by Jonathan Wilson, The Guardian, published on September 15, 2015. On Wednesday, the players of FC Astana will board a plane in Lisbon and fly east for 3830 miles to get home. To put that in context, that's 400 miles further than flying from London to New York. If they drove (non-stop), the journey would take them 77 hours and take them through nine countries and five time zones. It is, in short, a long way. But those players will make the journey having made history, as the first Kazakh side to play in the group stage of the Champions League.

“Astana, Almaty among TOP-10 popular CIS cities" - Russian internet portal Travel.ruunveiled what cities of the CIS countries are the most popular among Russian tourists travelling on their own. The results of the survey were based on the hotel booking data in 2015. The top 10 popular CIS cities include: Minsk, Kiev, Almaty, Baku, Erevan, Astana, Vitebsk, Bishkek, Tashkent and Chisinau. Among top 20 popular CIS cities are Brest, Grodno and Gomel in Belarus; Lviv, Odessa and Kharkov in Ukraine; Aktau and Aktobe in Kazakhstan as well as Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Dushanbe in Tajikistan.