Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is no longer a state that can be ordered about and told what to do. We know what we have to do. We shouldn't run after foreign recommendations with our pants down."

Capsules by Michael Sragow and Chris Kaltenbach. Full reviews at baltimoresun.com/movies. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan -- features a terrific, risky comic creation: a village idiot for the global village. A TV reporter from Kazakhstan comes to the United States and discovers everything you always wanted to know about America but were afraid to ask. Conceived and acted by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, the character of Borat catalyzes uncommon combinations of hospitality and hostility at every stratum of American society.

MOSCOW -- A British comedian impersonating a Kazakh reporter who clashes with feminists and learns the ways of evangelical Christianity on a cross-country romp through the United States doesn't seem a likely enemy of the Russian state. But, apparently, Russia thinks he is. The satirical film, in which the fictional Borat Sagdiyev during a cultural fact-finding mission to America portrays his central Asian homeland as one where women are kept in cages and homosexuals were once forced to wear blue hats, will not appear on movie screens here.

Borat is a terrific, risky comic creation: a village idiot for the global village. A TV reporter from Kazakhstan, a country that as pictured here makes Tobacco Road look like Park Avenue, Borat comes to the United States and discovers everything you always wanted to know about America but were afraid to ask. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (20th Century Fox) Starring Sacha Baron Cohen. Directed by Larry Charles. Rated R. Time 85 minutes.

TURIN, Italy -- In a tournament shaping up as Canada against all comers, the U.S. men's hockey team took a modest step toward medal contention yesterday. In a respectable but not overwhelming 4-1 victory over Kazakhstan, the Americans washed away the aftertaste of the sour tie against Latvia one night earlier. They also felt a bit better about themselves after a check of the scoreboard, which revealed that Russia had shut out second-seeded Sweden and unheralded Switzerland had stunned the Czech Republic, 3-2. "You would think the Czechs could score 100 goals, just based on their talent," U.S. coach Peter Laviolette said.

MOSCOW -- Kazakhstan's only post-Soviet leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, handily won re-election yesterday, giving him another seven years at the helm of a regime that has nurtured Central Asia's largest economy but failed to bring the oil-rich republic any closer to democracy. The Central Elections Commission said today that Nazarbayev had won 91 percent of the votes in yesterday's election, according to the initial count. His closest challenger, Zharmakhan Tuyakbai, got 6.6 percent. Seventy-seven percent of registered voters cast ballots, the commission said.

HONG KONG - One of China's state-owned oil companies may still be smarting from its failure to acquire Unocal this summer. But another Chinese oil giant showed yesterday that this country is still snapping up assets to satisfy its hunger for energy. China's biggest state-owned oil company, China National Petroleum Corp., said it would pay $4.18 billion for a Canadian oil company with shares traded in New York and substantial reserves in Kazakhstan. It is China's largest foreign acquisition yet, and more than twice what a Chinese computer company paid for International Business Machines Corp.

MOSCOW - A strain of avian influenza virus that can be lethal to humans has spread from Southeast Asia to poultry flocks in Russia and Kazakhstan, a scientific journal reported yesterday, leading a British researcher to warn that the virus may be approaching Europe. "If we are seeing an expansion in range, that is something we should be concerned about," Ian Brown, head of avian virology at the United Kingdom Veterinary Laboratories Agency, told the journal Nature in an article published yesterday on its Web site.

MOSCOW - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin held wide-ranging talks in Kiev yesterday as the Kremlin leader made his first visit to the Ukrainian capital since a pro-Western government came to power in January. Appearing at a joint news conference, the leaders played down strains in the two countries' relationship triggered by Ukraine's recent political crisis. They pledged to build stronger economic ties and settle lingering boundary disputes left from the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.