One of the consequences of Montenegro’s split from Serbia was the country’s need for its own top level domain, following its departure from .yu and .cs. In September 2007, ICANN settled for .me, potentially setting up another odd, little-country bonanza like .tv and .to.
Miquel Hudin Balsa relates his experience playing around to get a tasty [...]

“It should be noted that AIG wrote its derivative contracts in London.” – Commenter Thomas, at Crooked Timber
And indeed, we see a report on Bloomberg, the wire service the financial folks use to communicate with each other, that Allianz was involved in a bid for AIG two days before the crisis that led to its [...]

It isn’t working, and Ukraine’s parliament has 30 days to form a new ruling coalition. Good luck with that, too. If not, elections in December.
The long-simmering feud between Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko has, again, reached its breaking point. Tymoshenko, the current premier, has a month to engineer a new coalition, which would have to [...]

Flight to quality is about the only thing I can say for sure about the ongoing Wall Street crisis that swallowed up a 158-year-old investment bank and forced Merrill (no-relation) Lynch to be sold to some outfit in North Carolina. (The $613+ billion that Lehman lists as debt is between the 2007 GDP of Belgium, [...]

That’s what Paul Adamson argues for in today’s Financial Times.  The basis of the argument is that we should acknowledge that the commissioners are not a dispassionate executive branch of the European Union, but people who bring their country interests to their respective portfolios — so why not make this explicit and let the commissioners [...]

Osama bin Laden is still at large.
If you haven’t read 110 Stories, you should.
Last year. Edward, in 2004.

I wanted to write a post comparing Kosovo and South Ossetia, but Dan Drezner has already written it. It’s a week old now, but still good:
It’s been more than a week since Russia recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. The number of other countries that have followed Russia’s lead is…. well, [...]

In an action that may remind the White House why their ally can sometimes be exasperating even to them, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili apparently pre-empted an announcement that George Bush will attend  a special “Summit of Friends of Georgia” in late October - which would be within a fortnight of the US elections in November.  White [...]

“Strange are the convulsions of defeat.” — Winston Churchill
So Serbia’s Radical Party, having lost two Presidential and three Parliamentary elections in a row, is breaking up. Sort of.
If you’re not a Serbia-watcher, here’s the short version: the Radicals are Serbia’s Obnoxious Populist Nationalist Party. Most Balkan countries have OPMPs. If they can [...]

Deference outlives ideology. If the Kremlin is for it, and Washington is against it, Ortega must be in favor.
From AFP, via
Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega has revived Cold War ghosts by recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia, supporting Russia’s stance on the breakaway Georgian regions.
Ortega, a former Marxist guerilla leader who had close ties to the ex-Soviet [...]