The festival of Nauryz will be celebrated from Thursday, March 21 to Saturday, March 23. Since Saturday is on the weekend, the last day of the holiday will be moved to Monday, March 25.
Kazakhstan delegates participated in a meeting of the International Union of Lawyers in Moscow. IUL Chairman Andrey Trebkov said the organisation was expanding its scope to include coordinating lawyers’ activities in areas of international cooperation including integration processes of the Common Economic Space (CES). Lawyers from more than 15 countries attended the meeting.
The International Physics Olympiad will be held in Kazakhstan in 2014. The Ministry of Education expects at least 500 visitors to attend. The International Olympiad in Informatics, an annual competition in computer programming for secondary school students, will be held in Astana in 2015.
New rules and regulations for regular domestic commercial flights have been approved. The rules will start a new era of free competition on domestic air routes. They will require competing airlines to have safety certificates after meeting the inspection standards of the International Air Transport Association (IATA). All aircraft will be required to have valid operating certificates with offices and certified personnel at every airport where they are based. The new regulations will come into force in 2015.
The Parliament of Kazakhstan is considering legalising entry for migrant workers to do house repairs and yard work. The bill would enable people in Kazakhstan to hire migrants for such work for up to one year on contracts that would be renewable. Almost all migrant workers in Kazakhstan come from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Last week, the lower chamber of Parliament approved the first reading of the bill.
President Nazarbayev appointed two new deputy chairmen to the National Security Committee, the Committee. Major General Nurgali Bilisbekov and Colonel Samat Abish were appointed to these posts. “On March 7 National Security Committee’s Chairman Nurtai Abykayev introduced his new Deputies to the Committee’s staff,” the Committee said. Meanwhile, the deputy chairman of the National Security Committee, Major General User Mizanbaev was appointed as the head of the Kostanai region’s Department of National Security Committee.
Nazarbayev University will admit 100 students for its graduate programme courses in 2013. The first students will begin their Executive MBA courses on March 25. The course will last for two years. Three more courses are offered by the Graduate School of Education and the Graduate School of Public Policy for Masters of Science (MSc) degrees in School Leadership and Higher Education. The programmes will last one year. Registration will begin on June 1 and the courses will start on August 19. Some 50 of the students will receive grants.
An online labour exchange for young people will start operating in March, Nurlan Sydykov, executive secretary of the youth wing of the Nur Otan Party said. The new service will provide young people with information on government programmes and projects. It is designed to help reduce the current 3.8 percent unemployment rate. Sydykov said the site was organised according to geographical regions and would publicise available jobs in budgetary organisations, health, education and private companies.
Some 60 artificial hearts are planned to be transplanted into patients with serious heart problems in Kazakhstan this year as an alternative to performing natural heart transplants, the National Cardiac Surgery Centre said.
Kazakhstan mountaineer Andrey Gundarev has climbed Orizaba, the highest volcano in North America with a height of– 5,700 meters (18,700 feet) in Mexico.
