France’s ambassador to Georgia is about to become the country’s new Foreign Minister

Right on time: The European Journalism Center’s report on the Cyprus Media landscape.

Confident of victory in the March 14th election, Russian President Putin has declared the resignation of the Prime Minister and his cabinet

Forty years on my isle of heartbreak - former Guardian editor Peter Preston’s personal reflections on Cyprus

20000 demonstrate in Tirana, calling on Albanian PM Fatos Nano to resign

An interesting article on how resolving the issues of Cyprus might affect the internal politics of Turkey and Turkey’s EU ambitions (found via Young Fogey)

Kofi Annan will have the power to set the final terms for a referendum on the reunification of Cyprus raising real hopes that the island could be reunified before it joins the EU

Ivan Rybkin now claims that his disappearance wasn’t entirely voluntary after all. Just to be on the safe side, he’ll stay abroad till the elections are over. (From the BBC.)

Ivan Rybkin wasn’t ‘disappeared’, it turns out. As the BBC reports, he simply disappeared of his own accord for a few days. Odd thing for a presidential candidate to do; what’s the ‘backstory’ here, one wonders?

Russian Presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin has gone missing. Police are now looking for him and he has not been seen since Thursday