Almaty, 16 December 1996 (RFE/RL) Construction of a new 80-bed hospital for the elderly has been completed.
According to data provided by the Kazakh Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, the number of veterans of World War II, of the war in Afghanistan and those who participated in liquidating the consequences of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster who live in Kazakhstan total around 156,000. The number of Kazakh citizens whose health had been drastically affected by operations at the Semipalatinsk nuclear testing grounds in northeastern Kazakhstan is more than one and a half million.
Cosmonaut To Head Space Mission
Our correspondents in Almaty quote Kazakh news agencies as saying that one of the international space crews scheduled to spend time in the Russian space Station MIR next year will be headed by Kazakh cosmonaut Talgat Musabayev.
His assistants will be Russian engineer cosnonaut Nikolay Dudarin and American astranaut Michael Dowell.
The fourth member of the crew, yet to be named is expected to be specialist from either China, Germany or the United States.