LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Kazakhstan: United States
built 630 days ago
BAIKONUR COSMODROME, Kazakhstan, Nov. 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SIRIUS 4 communications satellite, designed and built by Lockheed Martin for SES SIRIUS, an SES company , was successfully launched today from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Liftoff occurred at 4:39 a.m. (5:39 p.m. EST on Nov. 17) aboard a Proton/Breeze M launch vehicle provided by International Launch Services (ILS). Initial contact with the satellite was confirmed at 3:58 a.m. EST from the Lockheed Martin satellite tracking station in Uralla, Australia.
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In its survey analysis of religious freedom in Kazakhstan, Forum 18 News Service notes that the de facto religious freedom situation continues unchanged. Religious communities – notably Protestant Christian and Hare Krishna religious minorities, as well as non-state controlled Muslims - continued to experience state hostility and attacks on their freedom to carry out peaceful religious activity. The passage in 2005 of new "extremism" and "national security" laws significantly worsened the de jure religious freedom situation.
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Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Stone Age: the region's climate and terrain are best suited for nomads practising pastoralism. Historians believe that humans first domesticated the horse in the region's vast steppes. While ancient cities Taraz (Aulie-Ata) and Hazrat-e Turkestan had long served as important way-stations along the Silk Road connecting East and West, real political consolidation only began with the Mongol invasion of the early thirteenth century AD. Under the Mongol Empire, administrative districts were established, and these eventually came under the emergent Kazakh Khanate (Ak Horde).
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Kazakhstan welcomes the initiative to introduce a counter-terrorism strategy that provides for the elimination of the causes of terrorism and its renunciation as a tactical means to attract political attention. The success of this strategy will largely depend on the strengthening of international, regional and sub-regional cooperation in the fight against international terrorism and the growing role of regional organization in dealing with this evil. Yet building the capacity of states to prevent terrorist operations and recruitment by terrorists is the most effective element of a comprehensive strategy.
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The Education Ministry of Kazakhstan runs the highly successful "Bolashak Programme", which annually selects approximately three hundred exceptional school and university graduates and sponsors their undergraduate or postgraduate education in institutions abroad, including the prestigous Oxbridge and Ivy League universities. The terms of the programme include compulsory return to Kazakhstan for at least five years of employment by the State or in international organisations. The objective of the programme is to provide an opportunity for the most talented students from Kazakhstan to receive high-caliber education, enabling them to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to become the future leaders in certain key fields such as economics, technology, public policy, engineering, science and medicine.
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Kazakhstan joined with Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine at the Commonwealth of Independent States summit in Yalta, Ukraine, in September 2003 to create the Common Economic Space, an integration mechanism for the four strongest economies in the CIS. The concept had been proposed by Kazakh Pres.
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