Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia’s second poorest nation, is sitting on a pile of gold, quite literally. For years, the bulk of profits from the colossal Kumtor Mine have been sent abroad. Now, a new government is trying to change that. In May, the former Soviet republic sparked an international legal battle when it rolled in and took control of the Kumtor Mine, operated by Toronto-based Centerra Gold.... 

Footage emerging late this week from an annual military exercise hosted by Russia and involving China, India, and Pakistan has drawn the attention of western military experts who say it’s definitely “upped the ante this year” given the number of foreign forces and the sheer size of the drills, and especially given it’s the first time Russia’s historic political and economic rival China has... 

In accordance with a draft bill of the Ministry for Interior Affairs, migrants from the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union will be fined and expelled from Russia for the absence of the employment contract. For the time being, migrant workers from EEU countries – Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus – are exempt from the obligation to obtain work permit in member states... 

China’s Inner Mongolia is hosting the biggest military drill ever held by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The training of 7,000 servicemen from five SCO member states is set to test troops’ effectiveness in fighting terrorism. The Peace Mission-2014 drill, being conducted from August 24 to 29 in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, was declared open by Deputy Chief of Chinese... 

The Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missile defense system Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has confirmed that President Vladimir Putin will discuss military-technological cooperation with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani. The Iranian and Russian presidents plan to hold a bilateral meeting in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek on September 13 on the upcoming sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation... 

Kazakhstan has stepped up border controls with neighboring Kyrgyzstan, while China has refused to send its athletes to a meet there following news of a Kyrgyz teenager having died from bubonic plague, allegedly getting infected by a local rodent. Kazakhstan has issued a travel warning, urging its citizens not to go to Kyrgyzstan’s Issyk-Kul Lake resorts because of the recently-registered bubonic... 

(L-R) Nursultan Nazarbayev, Dmitry Medvedev and Aleksandr Lukashenko Three former Soviet republics have launched a new regional integration project, with at least two others on track to join in. Critics accuse Moscow of rebuilding the USSR, but architects of project say the aim is to become a better version of the EU. The idea of the Eurasian Union – initially between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan... 

Security personnel walk on the site of a military operation in the village of Besh-Kungei outside Bishkek. The new government of Kyrgyzstan has launched a crackdown on militants it claims are linked to extreme Islamic groups. Two suspected terrorists were killed and another was captured in a gunfight in Bishkek, the capital of the former Soviet Republic. “This is a religious extremist group whose... 

Early reports circulating in the Kremlin today from the Foreign Military Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (GRU) are showing that Russian forces have successfully engineered government coups against the American “puppet states” of the United States, Kyrgyzstan and Thailand. To the dangerously chaotic situation now existing in Kyrgyzstan we can read as reported... 

The Russians were less likely to register marriages with foreigners. However, experts still managed to calculate who among the inhabitants of Earth like most Russians. It turned out that the palm went to residents of neighboring Ukraine. At least , evidenced by the RF Ministry of Justice data presented in the State Duma on Monday at a roundtable on international marriages. According to State Duma...