So the Russians are saying they’ll withdraw from Georgia Real Soon Now. Meanwhile Moscow has signed treaties of mutual defense with the, you know, totally independent and sovereign nations of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. If Georgia makes a move — or something that Moscow thinks is a move, or wants to think is [...]

“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 [...]

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

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 [...]

Russia-Georgia is likely to be one of the main foreign policy issues “debated” at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota.  Dick Cheney is in Baku this evening and here is a statement from George Bush announcing a package of aid measures.  It includes the assertion –
The people of Georgia withstood the assault from the Russian [...]

Central Tbilisi is filling up with people coming out for an officially sanctioned (and organized) but also popularly supported rally for Georgia and against Russia. In the main roads, a human chain is forming, one that takes in the main cathedral and Parliament, as well as business areas, residential neighborhoods and bridges across the Mtkvari. [...]

This scares me shitless.
Methane gas oozing up from Siberian seabed: Swedish researcher
1 hour ago
STOCKHOLM (AFP) — Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is leaking from the permafrost under the Siberian seabed, a researcher on an international expedition in the region told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter on Saturday.
“The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated [...]

At this week’s summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Russian president Medvedev was reportedly seeking support for his country’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. If that’s true, he can’t be the mastermind he’s sometimes alleged to be in the conflict between Russia and Georgia.
Surely he knows that “territorial integrity” is [...]

There are a lot of bad things about the Georgia-Russia conflict, but this is just foolish: Nearly all Russia-based web sites seem to be blocked from Georgia, and by the Georgian side. Trying to surf to the Moscow Times gets me a domain-parking site, while Izvestiya.ru, just for example, yields a four-line message in Georgian. [...]