Kazakhstan

The President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has signed parliamentary ratification and with this committed the country to abolish the death penalty. This follows a freeze on capital punishment for nearly 20-years.

After banning the first Borat movie featuring the fictional Kazakhstani journalist Borat in the country, Kazakhstan has now picked up the catchphrase "very nice", that the character uses repeatedly, for a tourism campaign to attract new people coming and visiting the country.

The deputy chairman of Kazakh Tourism, Kairat Sadvakassov, has stated that "Kazakhstan's nature is very nice. Its food is very nice. And its people, despite Borat's jokes to the contrary, are some of the nicest in the world,".

The Soyuz mission, launched from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 05:45 UTC Wednesday, became the fastest ever journey from Earth to the ISS, with a total travel time of three hours and three minutes. Similar launches, since 2013, take around six hours.

Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos and NASA's Kathleen Rubins were onboard the Soyuz.

Roscosmos stated that "a new record for flights to the International Space Station was set – the total time from launch to docking of the Soyuz MS-17 was three hours and three minutes."

Previously, only an uncrewed Progress cargo space ship has used this profile which requires just two orbits before docking with the ISS.

The Chinese Chinese Embassy in Kazakhstan has issued a warning about an "unknown pneumonia" that has allegedly killed more than 1,700 people in the country. The embassy stated that the "Kazakhstani Health Department and other agencies are conducting comparative research and have not defined the nature of the pneumonia virus".

In response to the claims, the Kazakhstan health ministry stated that there are indeed "viral pneumonias of unspecified etiology" but added that these were known to the country and not new.

Cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, along with American astronaut Christopher Cassidy arrived today at the International Space Station (ISS) for a six-month mission in space. Before the takeoff, that took place in the Russian-controlled Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan; the three men spent a month in quarantine to keep them safe from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.