In what will most likely be our final Ukraine update of the year, Viktor Yanukovych has resigned as Prime Minister of Ukraine.
“I have made a decision and am formally submitting my resignation,” he said in a televised address.
However, the man declared to have lost the country’s re-run presidential election to Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko has refused [...]

Has it escaped notice that the brunt of the tsunami catastrophe has fallen on the world’s most populous Muslim country? One that has an active branch of al Qaeda?
This is an ideal time for Western governments — especially European ones — to do well by doing good. Conspicuous aid to suffering Muslims can only be [...]

Ukraine’s Central Election Commission has rejected Viktor Yanukovych’s appeal against the result of the re-vote in its entirety, reports AP. Yanukovych is now expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.
His campaign manager stated: “We … call on our supporters, which are 15 million, not to split the state, to observe the law and not to [...]

Like most numbers of the Spectator, the festive, XL-sized holiday edition is marred by the presence of Mark Steyn. But don’t let that put you off, there’s some good stuff there as well. And one of the better bits is an essay by Prof. Norman Stone on Turkey (Potential EU Accession of) (reg. req.).
For the [...]

Like most other bloggers, there’s really not much one can say about the Asian earthquake that’s not already echoing through the heads of our readers. The latest estimate I’ve heard is of at least 57,000 people dead, a number that’s getting too large to contemplate.
It may not feel like much, but we can all do [...]

While the official results of yesterday’s re-run Presidential election will likely not be announced for a couple of days, opposition candidate Viktor Yushshenko looks certain to win this time - if the country’s Central Election Commission has been doing a better job than in November. The BBC has calculated that he has “an unassailable lead” [...]

KIEV, Ukraine (Reuters) - Exit polls in the re-run of Ukraine’s presidential election Sunday said liberal challenger Viktor Yushchenko had beaten Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich by a wide margin.
Yushchenko, who called crowds of supporters into the streets to denounce cheating in the last poll, scored 56.5 percent to 41.3 percent for Yanukovich, according to a [...]

I was a little surprised to read in the Christmas edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (not yet online, subscription wall, in German) that Robert Mundell seems to have changed his mind. In his seminal 1961 paper about monetary integration, he famously stated that “the optimum currency area is not the world”. Now it appears [...]

If you are interested in the issues raised by the case of Wolfgang Daschner (discussed in two earlier posts), you might wish to acquaint yourself with the similar case of Alexander Holmes.
I mentioned this case in comments to the earlier of those two posts. I also mentioned that you really ought to read it. Happily, [...]

Slate announces that its parent, Microsoft, has sold the pioneering online magazine (where afoe’s own Scott MacMillan’s byline appears from time to time) to the Washington Post. I haven’t seen Slate’s figures, but it’s just possible that Microsoft might not need to show its financial statements pro forma for the divestiture.
At this juncture it would [...]