On the eve of the New Year  the mobile Kulluk drill ship owned by the energy company Shell ran aground in the Gulf of Alaska, near Kodiak Island. This made reconsider the readiness of oil companies to pursue drilling operations under extreme harsh weather conditions. Due to Shell‘s failures Norwegian Statoil is going to postpone the beginning of drilling in the Chukchi Sea, whereas the French Total announced that the risk of an oil spill in such an environmentally sensitive area was too high to start drilling in the Arctic.   READ MORE

Ambassador of Kazakhstan Yerik Utembayev attended the session of the Union of the Voivodeships of the Republic of Poland in Warsaw, Kazinform has learnt from the Kazakh MFA's press service. READ MORE

Hungary hasn’t yet become an authoritarian state, but if the Prime Minister wishes so, it will. READ MORE

The Roman Catholic Church has chosen a new pope and he comes from Argentina. The papacy now enters a new era with Jorge Bergoglio, Latin America's first pope and the first pontiff to come from the developing world. READ MORE