Kazakhstan was once a nation of nomads wandering vast steppes. They herded cattle, goats and camels. On the country’s western edge lies the Caspian Sea. Towns grew up along the shore there, hauling in catches of sturgeon and black caviar.

But otherwise, Kazakhstan was an empty desert. Even in the days of the old Silk Road, traders would skirt Kazakhstan’s southern border rather than try to cross that hell of a desert. It was remote. Desolate. The Soviets used parts of the northeast to test nuclear weapons.

The Aral Sea, site of one of the greatest environmental disasters ever, is in Kazakhstan. A century ago, carp, perch, caviar-bloated sturgeon and much more filled the Aral Sea. Fisherman hauled hundreds of tons of fish per year, fed themselves and loaded trains full of fish headed to Moscow. Then the Communists had some harebrained scheme to use the water for irrigation.

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State Street Global Advisors' SDPRs offer the only two Japanese equity ETFs based on this index series. The annual rebalancing of the Russell/Nomura Japanese stock indexes just concluded, resulting in more than 30% turnover rates for each series in the benchmarking family. The Russell/Nomura Total Value Index had 212 deletions and 176 additions, while the Russell/Nomura Total Growth Index had 270 deletions and 136 additions. Those changes represented capitalization turnover ratios of 30.9% for value, and 33.3% for growth, among the highest-ever index rebalancing for the Russell Investments and Nomura Securities' Japanese equity benchmarks since their launch in 1981. There are Japanese stock exchange-traded funds from Barclays Global Investors' iShares family, Northern Trust's NETS and from WisdomTree Investments. However, State Street Global Advisors' SDPRs offers the only two Japanese equity ETFs based on this index series: the SPDR Russell/Nomura PRIME Japan ETF (NYSE Arca: JPP) and the Russell/Nomura Small Cap Japan ETF (NYSE Arca: JSC). JPP ...