Monaco is voting!
We were going to write something inevitably snarky about the Eurovision song contest (Hello from Minsk!) but Manolo’s Shoe Blog has pictures that are worth many, (Three points for Malta!) many, many thousands of words. (Good evening Amsterdam! Hello Kiev! This is the Netherlands calling!)
They’re here (Our twelve points go to … Turkey!)
here [...]

Crooked Timber’s Eszter Hargittai found a new paper by physicists about social networks and the Eurovision Song Contest and sulkingly remarks that a) CT was far ahead on the curve on this matter and that b)

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The euro reached its lowest level against the dollar in seven months last week dropping from a valueof $1.311 a month ago to $1.255 on Friday. This was the lowest level since last October. Undoubtedly there are a confluence of factors at work here: yesterday’s French growth numbers, longer term stagnant growth [...]

Karimov has unsurprisingly rejected calls for an independent international investigation into events in Andijan. This article on Mosnews gives some analysis and background.

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Nathan at Registan, as usual, has [...]

In the light of what went on around yesterday’s post, I find the following report incredible:
“Kosovo’s U.N. governor will tell the U.N. Security Council next week the disputed province has made major progress on security and minority rights, in a report that could mark the beginning of the end of the province’s uncertain status.
In the [...]

This is becoming more and more preoccupying:
Thousands of Shiites, many waving Islam’s holy book over their heads, protested the U.S. presence in
Iraq on Friday after the detention of several supporters of a radical cleric, while Sunnis shut down places of worship elsewhere in a show of anger over alleged sectarian violence against the minority.
Again, this [...]

French economic growth slowed more than expected in the first quarter and this is bound to have a negative impact on yesterdays ‘big push’ to win support for the ‘yes’ in the European constitution referendum. Gross domestic product in what is Europe’s third-largest economy grew January -March by only 0.2%. This compares with the [...]

After the sorry incident of the Independent ‘racism scare’ yesterday, I really have to say I can sympathise with Germans who are getting tired of being treated as if they were all ‘Hitlers Children’.
“Germany’s federal president Horst K?hler called on the British people on Thursday to drop their “stereotypical” and “negative” views of Germany, in [...]

Former government colleague of Jos? Maria Aznar, and now International Monetary Fund managing director, Rodrigo Rato has also been voicing opinions today.
In an interview given to the Spanish magazine Expansion, he says:
A 48-hour limit would push the eurozone in ‘the opposite direction’ from the rest of the world. ‘It is sending the wrong message…. ‘I [...]

I recently posted on Afoe about the frivolous ways in which people tend to throw around the N*Z* word these days. Latest on the list is Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called former Spanish Premier Jose Maria Aznar a “fascist,” saying Aznar once told him to forget about the poor nations of the world. [...]