Kabar was founded in 1937 as KyrTAG, making it the oldest news agency in Kyrgyzstan and a Soviet-era institution that outlived the state that created it. It became a state-run agency of independent Kyrgyzstan and was renamed KyrgyzKabar in 1992, then the Kyrgyz National Agency for Telecommunications and Information Administration Kabar three years later, and finally the Kyrgyz National News Agency Kabar in 2001. It describes itself as the only state information and analytical institution and the coordinator of the country's domestic and international information policy, and as the mouthpiece of state power. Its jurisdiction is the Government of Kyrgyzstan. Mederbek Shermetaliev is director general. The agency publishes in Kyrgyz, Russian, English, Turkish, Chinese and Arabic, and holds news exchange agreements across the CIS and with Xinhua, TASS, Anadolu, Yonhap, WAM, QNA and CNA. Today, Kabar is mainly focused on presidential, parliamentary and cabinet coverage, the economy, regional development across all seven provinces, Central Asian and Turkic states affairs, the World Nomad Games and tourism, from their base in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. One interesting fact: The agency's partner list runs to sixteen logos in a rotating footer carousel, nearly all of them other state news agencies, including TASS, Xinhua, BelTA, AZERTAC, UzA, Khovar, KUNA and QNA. A wire service whose published peer group is almost entirely government-owned.