East and South Asia

Japan may lift its ban on Internet electioneering in time for this summer’s elections.

Another quarter, another Japanese contraction.

Valentine’s Day in Shahbagh.

South Korean president-elect Park Guen-hye has announced six new ministers, including former chief presidential secretary Yun Byung-se as foreign minister.

The Diplomat speculates at five ways China could become a democracy.

North America

The Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein gives us his scorecard for U.S. president Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night.

Perhaps the biggest news out of the State of the Union address was the ‘water’ gaffe made by U.S. senator Marco Rubio (shown above) in giving the Republican Party’s response.

Perhaps the most important news out of the State of the Union address is the launch of U.S.-E.U. free trade agreement talks.  Tyler Cowen shares his thoughts here.  (But what does Joseph Weiler think?) The view from Europe.

Liberal Party leadership frontrunner Justin Trudeau starts to take some hits.

Latin America / Caribbean

Jamaica attempts a debt swap plan.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is apparently undergoing additional arduous treatment procedures.

Grenada’s opposition party launches its manifesto.

Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto wants to boost tourism.  [Spanish]

The Guatemalan Rios Montt genocide trial is set for August 14.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Zimbabwe will hold its constitutional referendum, as a tentative matter, on March 16.

Forget Mali. Is Niger next?

Ghanaian president John Dramani Mahama pledges to respect the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on the December 2012 presidential election.

In the first Kenyan presidential debate, voters narrowly ranked Uhuru Kenyatta ahead of Raila Odinga.

The ICC cases against Kenyatta and his running mate, William Ruto, take center stage today.

Europe

Foreign Policy throws cold water on Scottish independence.

Another guide to the papal conclave.

France’s Assemblée nationale passed a gay marriage law on Tuesday.

Are we headed to early elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

An intriguing official portrait is unveiled for Czech president-elect Miloš Zeman.

Poland’s opposition leader Jarosław Kaczyński is calling a vote of no-confidence in prime minister Donald Tusk.

Russia and Former Soviet Union

Even Russians need a visa for Sochi’s 2014 Winter Olympics.

Global Financial Integrity targets Cyprus as the largest destination for Russian money laundering.

Middle East and North Africa

Amnesty International calls for Bahrain to release political prisoners two years after the 2011 protests surrounding the now-demolished Pearl Roundabout (pictured above).

Naftali Bennett, today, is the unhappy party in the ongoing coalition talks in Israel.

Egypt’s new protests law may be too restrictive.

Jordan’s King Hussein II will look for a ‘consensus’ candidate for Jordanian prime minister following elections late last month.

Australia

Kevin Rudd for pope.

♥, Etc.

Happy Valentine’s Day to Aaron Benson.

East and South Asia

Quartz catalogues China’s accounting scandals.

Myanmar catches on to the central bank independence trend.

The European Union is softening its position on Gujarati chief minister Narendra Modi, who will likely be the BJP candidate for prime minister in 2014.

South Korean president-elect Park Geun-hye announces her second pick for prime minister, former prosecutor Chung Hong-won.

Nepal’s Maoist leaders go for a facelift.

North America

The U.S. Senate interrogates CIA director nominee John Brennan on drone strikes.

On our continuing series of stories on the German language in the United States.

Things don’t end well when you step into a boxing ring with Justin Trudeau.

Latin America / Caribbean

‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier (pictured above), who returned to Haiti in 2011 after 25 year in exile failed to show for a hearing on possible human rights abuse charges.

Miranda state governor and opposition leader Henrique Capriles lashes out against charges of corruption from the chavista government.

The Economist considers the reelection of Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa.

The Rios Montt trial in Guatemala will begin in August.  [Spanish]

Trinidad gets ready for its annual Carnival this weekend. Get your fete on!

Africa

The Nigerian opposition forms the All Progressive Congress to challenge president Goodluck Jonathan.

The two major Kenyan presidential candidates face internal strife.

Europe

London mayor Boris Johnson is haranguing deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.

One-time Labour leader challenger David Miliband speaks out on the UK’s role in Europe in an interview with Spiegel.

SYRIZA narrowly leads New Democracy in Greece, neo-nazi Golden Dawn remains in third.

Not the most auspicious start to the EU budget talks.

Leftist Puglia regional president Nichi Vendola is not happy about a potential Bersani-Monti coalition.  [Italian]

Middle East

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hold his first post-election meeting next week with Natfali Bennett, Bayit Yehudi leader (and onetime Netanyahu chief of staff).

Things are not going so well in Tunisia.

If it’s Friday, more mass protests in Cairo.

Oceania

Although budgeted to collect $2 billion in revenue, Australia’s new mining tax has raised just $126 million in its maiden year.

An interview with New Zealand prime minister John Key.

East and South Asia

Paul Krugman examines Japan’s economy.

Yunnan province in China ends its re-education system.

In a key speech, Gujarati chief minister Narendra Modi edges closer to a national campaign in 2014.

Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew turns 90 this year.

Three more people in North Waziristan were killed Wednesday by U.S. drone strikes.

Taiwan gets a new premier and cabinet.

North America

The administration of U.S. president Barack Obama will release additional legal memos to Congress concerning the target killings of U.S. citizens abroad who are leaders of al Qaeda.

On the threat of German-speaking Americans.

Canada and the European Union edge closer to a free trade agreement.

Latin America / Caribbean

Colombia’s largest rebel group FARC calls for the legalization of cocaine farming (pictured above).

The Falkand Islands / Islas Malvinas come to yet another crossroads, but Argentine foreign minister Héctor Timerman denies that the upcoming status referendum is legitimate.

Africa

France wants to pull out of Mali by March.

Looking to Eritrea’s future.

Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, who face charges in the International Criminal Court, will learn next week if they are eligible to run for the presidency (and vice presidency).

Europe

Cyprus is Greece, but with dodgier banks.

Italy’s leftist coalition considers an alliance with technocratic, reforming prime minister Mario Monti.  [Italian]

Ireland’s Dáil has passed emergency legislation to liquidate the Anglo Irish Bank.

The European Union turns to a budget summit.

Annette Schavan, Germany’s education minister, plagiarized part of her Ph.D. thesis.

Kosovo argues that a meeting between the heads of state of Serbia and Kosovo is de facto Serbian recognition of Kosovar independence.

The by-election in Eastleigh to replace scandal-plagued Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne in the U.K. will take place February 28.

A delicate dance between outgoing Czech president Václav Klaus and his successor Miloš Zeman.

Middle East

Tunisia’s prime minister, Hamadi Jebali, moves to dissolve the government after the assassination of opposition leader Chokri Belaid Wednesday.  More analysis here.

Hamas and Fatah are in unity talks.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Asia has been using a base in Saudi Arabia to launch drone strikes.

East and South Asia

China attempts to narrow its income gap.

North America

One take on the legacy of Aaron Swartz and Internet freedom.

Latin America / Caribbean

On Nicaraguan education.

Africa

I, too, can think of a few good reasons why France didn’t intervene in Centrafrique.

Europe

A victory in the UK House of Commons for gay marriage.

A poll on Cyprus’s election.

Middle East

U.S. president Barack Obama is headed to Israel.

East and South Asia

A verdict is due in the war crimes trial of Abdul Quader Mollah, a leader of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami.

Pakistan’s political parties are getting down to brass tacks on a caretaker prime minister.

North America

Canada bids farewell to the penny (pictured above).

U.S. senator John McCain compares Iran’s president to a ‘monkey’ (to be fair, it’s not every day that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asks to be launched into space).

Greenland will go to the polls March 12.

Latin America / Caribbean

Argentina will get a two-month price freeze, in a sign that clearly no one is worried about inflation.

A regulation change for nightclubs in Brazil?

Colombia’s ELN reports taking two Germans hostage.

Africa

More on Nigeria’s sorpasso of South Africa by 2020.

ICTR genocide acquittals shock Rwanda.

Europe

Former UK energy minister and leading Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne pleads guilty — more background on the speeding scandal here.

Serbian prime minister Ivica Dačić is in trouble over a meeting with an organize crime leader.

The Financial Times weighs in on Iceland four years after its financial crisis.

Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy responds to accusations of receiving illicit funds with some perplexing answers.

Fallout from the attempted assassination of Armenian presidential candidate Paruyr Hayrikyan.

Middle East

Wrangling over Lebanon’s electoral system.

Yair Lapid, says an aide to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is drunk with power.

Netanyahu is now also looking to Tzipi Livni’s party as a potential coalition ally.

Miscellaneous

Suffragio has been voted one of four ‘finalists’ in the Duck of Minerva‘s contest for ‘Most Promising New Blog’ of 2013 — thanks to all of the readers who voted for my blog!

Does comparative politics suffer from confirmation bias? You might well think that. I couldn’t possibly comment.

East and South Asia

Bhutan booming.

Indian president Pranab Mukherjee will back tougher laws against sexual assault and rape.

Why India doesn’t need a new rape law.

The Philippine economy may have grown at 6.5% in 2012.

Japanese finance minister Tarō Asō is looking to the 1930s in the United States as precedent for fiscal stimulus.

Japan’s government gears up for the fight over the next chair of the Bank of Japan, to be selected in April.

North America

New York City remembers Ed Koch, mayor in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Premier-designate Kathleen Wynne gives the Ontario Liberals a boost into a three-way tie in Canada’s largest province.

Latin America / Caribbean

Paraguayan presidential third-party candidate Lino Oviedo has died in an airplane accident.  [Spanish]  English story here.

Fidel Castro (pictured above) emerged to vote in Sunday’s Cuban parliamentary elections.

Rafael Correa has a smooth path to reelection as Ecuador’s president.

What John Kerry means as U.S. secretary of state for Latin America.

Africa

A closer look at Swazi elections later this year.

An Ethiopian editorial weighs in against former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s kind words for Il Duce.

Ghanaian president John Dramani Mahama is not a liberal on gay rights.

Europe

More on a potential Cyprus bailout.

More on why Cyprus could be a problem.

Socialist opposition leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba has called on Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy to resign.

Silvio Berlusconi pledges to revoke an unpopular local property tax in the Italian election campaign.

Former UK prime minister Tony Blair talks to Andrew Marr.

Árni Páll Árnason, former minister of economic affairs, will succeed Icelandic prime minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir as leader of the Social Democratic Alliance.

But the center-right Independence Party leads polls in advance of Icelandic elections.

France’s gay marriage bill moves closer to passage.

Should Georgia’s parliament select the next president?

Middle East

Why Qatar is backing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Yair Lapid thinks he can oust Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister.

Checking in on the latest in Egypt’s political struggle.

A new twist in the generational saga surrounding the Saudi succession.

Australia

Australian prime minister Julia Gillard’s Labor Party is behind in polls.

East and South Asia

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ is not popular in Pakistan.

North America

Former U.S. senator and nominee for U.S. defense secretary Chuck Hagel has a tough day of hearings.

Latin America / Caribbean

Argentina’s government turns down a Falklands summit.

An explosion at México’s state-owned oil company, Pemex.

FARC clashes with the Colombian government.

How to maintain Peruvian economic growth.

Africa

Islamist rebels in Mali are on the defensive after three weeks of French activity.

Kenya’s March 4 presidential election will feature eight candidates.

Europe

Armenian presidential candidate Paruir Airikian is shot and wounded.

German chancellor Angela Merkel is distancing herself from her coalition partner, the Free Democratic Party.

A slush fund for Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular?

Russian prime minister Dmitri Medvedev (pictured above with president Vladimir Putin) lays out his economic goals.

Middle East

Foreign Policy peeks into Lebanon.

Will Hamas try to take over the leadership of the PLO?

Photo credit to Dmitry Astakhov of RIA Novosti.

East and South Asia

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe will determine his government’s stance on the Trans-Pacific Partnership before summer upper-house elections.

Taking a closer look at South Korean president-elect Park Guen-hye’s prime ministerial blunder.

North America

Calculated Risk on why the United States should not be too worried about its apparent 0.1% contraction in 4Q 2012.

Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine on why the US should be worried.

Latin America / Caribbean

Rafael Correa has a commanding 56% lead in advance of the Feb. 17 Ecuador presidential election — businessman Guillermo Lasso is his nearest competition with 13%.

Efraín Ríos Montt will face trial for genocide and crimes against humanity conducted while leading Guatemala in the 1980s.

More Ríos Montt background here.  [Spanish]

One economist on the performance of Peruvian president Ollanta Humala.

AMLO loses his battle over the July 2012 Mexican presidential election.

Africa

Zimbabwe — the country — has apparently only $217 left in its coffers. (Kickstarter, anyone?)

The grammatical ‘boo-boos’ of Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan.

Shell will pay some compensation to Nigerian farmers following largely pro-Shell Dutch ruling.  More here.

French forces have taken the key northern Mali town of Kidal.

Patrice Motsepe, Africa’s wealthiest black man, will donate half his wealth to the poor.

Looking at the next Malagasy election.

Europe

French voters lack confidence in president François Hollande by a 65% to 30% margin.

A look at where voters stand if snap Czech parliamentary elections occur, amid new pressure on Petr Nečas’s government on the EU fiscal compact.

Benjamin Elsner and Klaus F. Zimmermann publish research on migration to Germany in the decade following EU enlargement.

Felix Salmon at Reuters examines the soon-to-be-previewed European financial transactions tax.

Lady Ashton weighs in on the Russian ‘gay propaganda’ ban.

Yanukovych’s ‘family’ spreads its tentacles in Ukraine.

UK senior Tory Kenneth Clarke says that leaving the EU would be a fatal mistake.

Looking back on the rise of Adolf Hitler on its 80th anniversary.

Middle East

Egyptian military chief Abdul Fattah al-Sisi warns the political crisis could lead to state collapse. (How far are we from a ‘memorandum coup’ circa Turkey 1997?)

Israeli president Shimon Peres meets party leaders following last week’s elections.

Tunisian Salafists on the rise?

East and South Asia

The influence of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Thai government.

Mongolia is booming.

A profile of Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen.

Japan’s budget as an economics lesson.

Approval for the new Japanese government’s record budget.

The ongoing smog crisis in China.

The new prime minister-designate in South Korea withdraws.

North America

The Obama administration plots immigration reform.

The U.S. Senate has overwhelmingly approved senator John Kerry for U.S. secretary of state.

ThreeHundredEight‘s analysis of the Ontario Liberal leadership vote.

Latin America / Caribbean

Mexican finance minister Luis Videgaray pledges not to privatize Pemex.  [Spanish]

Barbados will go to the polls on February 21.

Why you shouldn’t care too much about the Feb. 3 Cuban elections.

Raúl Castro takes over the CELAC leadership.

Africa

Awaiting a Dutch court’s ruling over Shell’s actions in Nigeria.

Even more on Ethiopian water plans.

Uhuru Kenyatta will definitely be running for president of Kenya.

Elections in Mali by year-end now that Timbuktu is secured?  [French]

Europe

UK prime minister David Cameron will go to Algeria.

Catalunya, fresh off a vote for independence, is now asking the Spanish federal government for a fresh bailout.

French labour minister Michel Sapin claims the country is ‘totally bankrupt‘.

A controversy over the longtime Siena bank, Monte dei Paschi.

Weighing in on Armenia’s upcoming election.

Polish GDP growth fell from 4.3% to just 2.0 in 2012.

Norwegian-European relations are getting testy.

Greece’s finance minister says the country will recover in 2014.

Rainer Brüderle, a top politician in Germany’s Free Democratic Party, is under fire for making sexist remarks.

Middle East

Israel may have given its Ethiopian immigrants birth control involuntarily.

Israeli Central Bank governor Stanley Fischer is stepping down early.  Martin Wolf at The Financial Times adds his thoughts.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning a coalition that includes two-thirds of the Knesset.

Jeffrey Goldberg pours cold water on the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Germany prepares for the visit of Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi.

Meanwhile, his one-time presidential opponent and former regime figure Ahmed Shafiq is calling for a new constitution and elections.

Bassem Sabry’s 15 points on how Egypt can step back from its current crisis.

Australia

Prime minister Julia Gillard announces that the next federal election will be on September 14 (pictured above).

Global

Who will be the next secretary-general to lead the World Trade Organization?

Photo credit to Alex Ellinghausen.

A very abbreviated version today, due to travel.

Queen Beatrix announced her plan to abdicate in favor of her son Willem-Alexander, who will be the first king of The Netherlands since 1890.

Populism and nationalism in the Czech election.

The French have retaken Timbuktu on behalf of Mali’s government.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez writes us a note.

East and South Asia

Would China block Korean re-unification?

Democracy in Pakistan.

A month in, support for Japan’s new government is on the rise, actually, at 66.7%.

North America

Kathleen Wynne was elected the leader of the Ontario Liberal Party on Saturday night, making her the next Ontario premier and the first LGBT premier in Canadian history.

A joint interview between U.S. president Barack Obama and outgoing U.S. secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Latin America / Caribbean

A nightclub fire that has killed nearly 230 people merits the attention of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff.

An attack on the Dominican Republic’s opposition party headquarters.

Another batty U.S. plot on Cuba, this time originating from the foreign aid sector.

The latest on the Colombian government talks with FARC.

Honduras is officially the most violent country in Latin America.  [Spanish]

Africa

The French troops in Mali are pushing toward Timbuktu.

The local wing of al-Qaeda in Somalia, al-Shabab, has its Twitter account deactivated.

Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga is leading the March 4 presidential race with 46%, followed closely by deputy prime minister Uhuru Kenyatta with 40%.  Another deputy prime minister, Musalia Mudavadi, lags far behind with just 5%.

Europe

Former social democratic prime minister Miloš Zeman won the Czech presidency in the first-ever direct election on Saturday.

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi heaps praise on former fascist leader Benito Mussolini less than a month before Italian elections.

More than 1 in 50 Portuguese have emigrated since 2011.

Wolfgang Münchau asks, ‘What is the point of the European Union?’

A pro-gay marriage rally gathered in Paris over the weekend.

What did Greek opposition leader Alexis Tsipras get out of his trip to the United States? (Read my piece on his appearance at the Brookings Institution in Washington here).

Middle East

After years in a coma, there are signs of brain activity for former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.

So now we have a state of emergency in three Egyptian cities.

East and South Asia

A closer look at Jakarta governor Joko Widodo, a rising star in Indonesian politics.

Kim Yong-jun was named prime minister-designate by South Korean president-elect Park Guen-hye.

PML-F politician Pir Pagara may become Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister.

Japan’s trade deficit climbs to its highest level since 1980.

North America

U.S. vice president Joe Biden is ‘intoxicated’ by a 2016 presidential run.

The Globe and Mail endorses Sandra Pupatello for Ontario Liberal leader.

Former Ontario Liberal frontrunner Gerard Kennedy seeks a last-minute boost.

Foreign Policy examines gay rights in the Americas.

Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina takes his fight for an alternative anti-drug strategy to Davos.  [Spanish]

Africa

Zimbabwe is set to approve a new constitution.

Will Sudan further disintegrate?

Europe

A surprisingly gentle response from German chancellor Angela Merkel to UK prime minister David Cameron’s EU speech.

A more ridiculed response from UKIP leader Nigel Farage.

The Catalan parliament approved a declaration supporting an independence referendum by a 85-41 vote.

Kosovo considers its first ambassador to Belgrade.

Spain’s unemployment rate rises to 26%.

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk is hospitalized.

The Czech presidential campaign nears its end, each candidate on the Czech economy, and tattooed former candidate Vladimír Franz will vote for Miloš Zeman.

Speigel interviews former Russian finance minister Alexei Kudrin.

Icelandic EU accession talks are merely delayed, not terminated.

Middle East

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will seek a broad-based coalition that includes both Yesh Atid and Bayit Yahudi.

Government loyalists have won the Jordanian parliamentary elections that most other parties boycotted.

Egyptian parliamentary elections will occur in three or four months, according to president Mohammed Morsi.

Sri Lanka aims to ban sending women to Saudi Arabia to work as housekeepers.

Turkey has a surprise cabinet reshuffle.

Leading Sunni cleric Abdul Malek al-Saadi is coming out against Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Global

A nickel glut.

East and South Asia

Quartz considers the weirdness of the Bank of Japan.

Nitin Gadkari is out — and Rajnath Singh is back in — as chief of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in India.  More analysis here.

Foreign Policy features a photo essay of Tibet during the Cultural Revolution.

Pakistani prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf starts to consider a caretaker government and upcoming spring elections.

South Korea’s outgoing president Lee Myung-bak has vetoed a taxi reform bill.

It didn’t take long for Japan’s new finance minister Taro Aso to make a gaffe.

Filipino candidates may now be campaigning ‘Gangnam style.’

The popularity of Hong Kong’s chief executive Leung Chun-ying is nosediving.

North America

After all the inaugural balls have ended (pictured above), U.S. House Republicans may pass a short-term extension of the debt ceiling.

Considering the fate of the next leader of the Ontario Liberal Party.

Tyler Cowen considers what a ‘Coasian’ bargain between Asia and relative underpopulated Latin America would look like.

Latin America is decriminalizing abortion.

Back in Venezuela, ministers are optimistic about president Hugo Chávez’s return from medical care.

Africa

Eritrea is calm after what appears to have been a failed coup.

Senegal wants to curb its baby boom.

Malians are fleeing for Algeria as the French-led efforts to back the government intensify.

The opposition NPP will now also boycott the vetting of the ministers of Ghanaian president John Dramani Mahama.

Kenya’s Amani coalition presidential candidate Musalia Mudavadi announces his running mate.

Europe

David Cameron promises an ‘in-or-out’ referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union by 2017.

Georgian foreign minister Maia Panjikidze reinforces its Europe-oriented policy.

Not incredibly reassuring news from Ukraine.

A gay rights demonstration in Moscow turns violent.

Fifty years of amicable Franco-German relations.

Middle East

Final results from the Israeli Knesset elections will come in shortly.

Bahrain’s opposition has agreed to talks with the government.

Hamdeen Sabahi rides again — this time, to win Egypt’s parliamentary elections.

A scandalous video emerges on election day in Jordan.

East and South Asia

The Bank of Japan has set a 2% inflation target.

Setting the stage for India’s 2014 national elections.

Former Chinese premier Jiang Zemin may be receding into the background.

China may be reconsidering its one-child policy.

North America

Something happened, I think, on Monday in the United States.

On U.S. treasury secretary Tim Geithner’s legacy.

Canada’s new $20 bill features a Norwegian maple leaf instead of a native one.

Latin America / Caribbean

Colombian rebel group FARC has ended its unilateral ceasefire.

Peruvian president Ollanta Humala’s popularity is on the rise — to 53%.  [Spanish]

Africa

First hints of a coup in Eritrea?

Ethiopia tiptoes toward elections for the Addis Ababa city council in May.

Europe

An assassination attempt in Bulgaria? Or a cheap trick?

Austrians have voted to retain conscription.

Labour lead over the Conservatives in the United Kingdom shrinks to five points.

UK prime minister David Cameron’s long-awaited EU speech will come Wednesday.

Alex Harrowell at Fistful of Euros argues that the Tories are accidentally selling the EU to the British.

Some thoughts from former UK prime minister Gordon Brown.

On inflation in Greece.

Charlemagne over at The Economist considers Sunday’s Lower Saxony elections.

Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem will become the next president of the Euro Group (see my previous piece on Dijsselbloem here).

Russia’s always been fairly anti-gay, but now the Duma’s passing anti-gay legislation.

Former frontrunner Jan Fischer has indirectly endorsed Miloš Zeman over Karel Schwarzenberg in the Jan. 25-26 Czech presidential runoff over the latter’s position on the expulsion of 2.5 million Germans from Czechoslovakia during World War II.

Wolfgang Münchau in the Financial Times argues that Mario Monti is not the right prime minister for Italy.

Middle East

Foreign Policy showcases Wednesday’s Jordanian elections.

Progress on Turkey’s EU accession talks.

Egypt’s secular National Salvation Front shakes off ties to the Mubarak regime.

Ten lessons for Libya from the Egyptian constitutional process.