Weekly news wrap

The trial of alleged al-Qaeda-linked militants accused of being behind a wave of violence in Uzbekistan in March and April was adjourned on Monday, during the first court proceedings after alleged Islamic militants reportedly attacked the US and Israeli embassies and the Uzbek chief prosecutor's office on 30 July, the AP reported. Judge Bakhtiyor Jamalov said the trial which started in late July was being held over due to a defence attorney's illness. Two Uzbek guards were killed by the explosion outside Israel's embassy in this former Soviet republic and another Uzbek guard was killed by a blast outside the US embassy. Eight other people were injured, all of them Uzbek citizens. On Tuesday, Washington put its citizens in Uzbekistan on alert following the incidents. "Although we have no information to suggest that additional attacks will occur, the possibility cannot be discounted at this time," the US State Department said in a travel warning. "Because of these attacks, we advise all American citizens to be on the highest alert for their safety and security. We also suggest that Americans avoid large crowds and public places where Westerners generally congregate in large numbers." On Thursday, the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency reported that the number of HIV/AIDS-infected cases in Uzbekistan had risen more than 25 times over the past four years. According to the Uzbek AIDS centre, the official number of people infected in 2000 was 154, while at present that figure was nearly 4,000. There has also been a sharp increase in the number of TB sufferers during the quoted period. There were now 134 persons infected with TB per every 100,000 of the population, the report added. In Tajikistan, the Aga Khan Foundation's Focus programme donated US $500,000 for the reconstruction of a road in the Bartang area of the eastern Badakhshon region, the Tajik Avesta news agency reported on Monday. According to emergency officials, the only road linking Bartang with other settlements in the region, had been washed away by heavy rains in mid-July. Under the same project, $300,000 was allocated for the reconstruction of a water supply system and the construction of an irrigation channel in the affected area. The United States had donated about $1.2 million to Dushanbe for measles vaccinations, the Tajik Asia-Plus news agency reported on Wednesday. Ibod Sharifi, the national coordinator for immunisation at the Tajik health ministry, said that 3 million people in the country, including children between one and 18 years old and medical personnel up to 29, would be vaccinated. Tajikistan has a population of 7 million with a median age of 19.5 years. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in conjunction with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), were expected to finance the vaccinations set to take place in late September, Sharifi added. Going north to Kazakhstan, about 2,700 cows infected with brucellosis were detected in the country's western region, an area once considered brucellosis-free, a local news agency reported on Tuesday. The general brucellosis situation in the area remained complicated, head of the regional agriculture department, Lavr Khayretdinov, said, noting that there were no veterinary stations in the rural districts. There was also an urgent need to build slaughterhouses and cattle burial grounds to mitigate the risk. As elections for the lower chamber of the Kazakh parliament, Mazhlis, approaches, the Election and Democracy International Association, a group of NGOs from Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Ukraine, said it would be sending observers to Central Asia's largest state. Vladimir Kadatskiy, a spokesman for the group, said on Tuesday that upwards of 140 observers from the association would be on the ground on election day set for 19 September 2004. The association also plans to conduct a long-term observation of the presidential elections in Ukraine in October 2004, as well as the Kyrgyz parliamentary polls in February 2005. Two people were hospitalised with anthrax in southern Kyrgyzstan after eating beef that may have carried the deadly illness, the AP reported on Thursday. The two were being treated at a hospital, while another 38 families - who were from the same village, Pakhta-Abad, and ate the same meat - were undergoing precautionary checks, Yelena Bayalinova, a spokeswoman for the Kyrgyz Health Ministry said. In June, five people were diagnosed with anthrax in the southern district of Suzak. Anthrax is a deadly disease that can be passed to humans from infected animals such as sheep and cattle. Meanwhile, in Turkmenistan the country's authoritarian president Saparmurat Niyazov said those seeking to get a driving license must also study Rukhnama, his famous quasi-historical code book held up as equal to the Quran in the most reclusive Central Asian nation, the AP reported. In a decree issued on Monday, Niyazov said drivers would be required to take a 16-hour course on Rukhnama, or Book of the Soul, that would serve in 'educating drivers in the spirit of high moral values of Turkmen society,' according to the state news agency. Niyazov has built a vast personality cult around himself since the largely desert but energy-rich state became independent in 1991, renaming the days of the week and months after himself and his deceased parents. September is now called Rukhnama.