Talas Copper Gold, a joint venture between Gold Fields and Britain’s Orsu Metals , said it would postpone a drilling programme due to begin next month until Kyrgyzstan was able to guarantee the safety of local residents.A mob on horseback armed with sticks and petrol bombs attacked the company’s exploration camp in the early hours of Oct. 8, setting fire to buildings and severely beating the security manager as he fled.The attack is the second on Talas Copper Gold’s operations this year and the latest in a series of assaults on mining company officials in Kyrgyzstan, which have heightened investor concerns as the country prepares to elect its next president.Although the company had originally planned to continue its November drilling plan , subsequent death threats prompted the local government to sign a protocol demanding the temporary halt of all activity, said David Grant, chairman of the management board at Talas Copper Gold.”Given this new situation, we decided … to suspend all plans for drilling until the state is able to guarantee the safety of the good citizens of Aral,” Grant said, referring to the village near the company’s licence areas in Talas province.”This effectively means that drilling is suspended at least until the criminal gang and their organisers are imprisoned.”Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic of 5.5 million people, holds an election on Oct. 30 that is widely seen as the final stage of constitutional reforms set in motion after the overthrow of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April 2010.Rejecting nearly two decades of failed authoritarian rule, the country is attempting to create the first parliamentary democracy in Central Asia, a mineral-rich and strategic region otherwise governed by presidential strongmen.The pro-business coalition government led by Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev, now running for the presidency, has promised to weed out corruption in the mining sector to secure the proceeds from many untapped metal deposits, but progress has been slow.Talas Copper Gold has four exploration licences in Talas province in northwestern Kyrgyzstan, prospective in copper, gold and molybdenum. It has invested $15 million between 2005 and 2010, and planned a further $2.5 million spend this year.

Those symptoms included being extra jumpy, having disturbing thoughts about the cancer and its treatment, or feeling emotionally numb towards friends and family.One in 10 patients also said they avoided thinking about their cancer and one in 20 said they steered clear of situations or activities that reminded them of the disease, a situation that could potentially become a medical problem.”You worry if the patient is avoiding medical care, you worry they might not be getting follow-ups,” Smith told Reuters Health.”We don’t have data to support that, but we worry about it.”The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, is based on a survey of 566 patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a relatively common kind of cancer.Smith’s team had surveyed these patients for PTSD symptoms once before, estimating that about one in 12 had full-blown PTSD. The diagnosis involved a trio of symptoms, including avoidance, arousal and flashbacks.Many more had one or more PTSD symptoms, however. The newest survey also showed they often persist.Overall, half of the patients had no PTSD symptoms 13 years after their diagnosis. The problems had disappeared in 12 percent, but had remained or worsened in 37 percent.”This study found that people seemed to have worse PTSD later on,” said Bonnie Green, a trauma expert at Georgetown University who pioneered the study of PTSD in breast cancer survivors, but was not linked to the latest study.”It’s just very stressful for people to be told that they have cancer. You can’t just assume that they feel bad now, but it will go away.”She stressed that it’s only a minority of patients who develop full-blown PTSD, but added that depression is common after a cancer diagnosis.The new survey shows that low-income people are extra vulnerable to the psychological impact of living with cancer.”I am particularly concerned about the patients who are poor or have less resources, said Smith, adding that doctors have to be better at recognizing distress in patients.”Each time they come in you are asking not only if they’re having pain, but also if they are having stress.”