By empty (5/9/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Uzbek Airlines has cancelled its flights to China, Malaysia, and Thailand in order to prevent the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) to Uzbekistan, uza.uz reported on 9 May. In addition, Uzbek health authorities have recommended that planes serving any region where SARS has appeared be equipped with surgical gloves, masks, and disinfectants and that a place where possible victims of the disease can be isolated on board be established.

By empty (5/11/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Hojimahmad Umarov, an economist at Tajikistan\'s Economic Research Institute, said on 11 May that the high annual rate of migration of able-bodied young people out of Tajikistan in search of work is affecting the country\'s birthrate. Umarov was quoted as saying that about one-third of the approximately 800,000 labor migrants who leave the country each year start families in the place where they find work, even if they already have families in Tajikistan. The result, said Umarov, is a shortage of marriageable young men and a growing number of children without fathers at home.

By empty (5/12/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Kyrgyz Deputy Interior Minister Rasulberdi Raimberdiev told a news conference in Osh on 12 May that the same people carried out both the bombing of an Osh currency-exchange office on 8 May and of Bishkek\'s Dordoy market on 27 December. One exchange-office employee was killed in the Osh attack. According to Raimberdiev, investigators looking into the two incidents have found evidence that the two men who were detained in connection with the blasts are members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which was responsible for armed incursions into southern Kyrgyzstan in 1999 and 2000 and has been internationally designated a terrorist organization because of its ties to the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.