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Der Standard According to Der Standard of Austria and Interfax, Ivan Rybkin has reappeared. According to his campaign manager, he spent the weekend at a friend’s house in Kiev and had decided not to watch television for a while. BBC report How very odd.

The Russian presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin, who disappeared in mysterious circs on Friday shortly after registering his candidacy, has not re-appeared as his backer Boris Berezovsky suggested he might. From the Moscow Times: “Gennady Gudkov, a member of the State Duma security committee, said Monday afternoon that security service officials had told him that Rybkin…

The other example of technical/economic cooperation as a solvent for political fury I was thinking of, but failed to produce on Friday, were the sewers of Nicosia. The sewerage system of the divided city was (I think) the work of a colonial engineer who modelled the system on that set up for London in the…

Story This is about the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in years. “The guards at the door packed M-16 rifles and the mid-show entertainment was a trio rapping about suicide bombers blowing up coffee shops. But on the runway, 20 young women in sizzling swimsuits and high-heeled black boots strutted their blow-dried manes and lithe…

Today is your last opportunity to vote for me in The Guardian’s political blog awards. Follow this link and send them an email with Yorkshire Ranter in the subject line before the end of today. Thanks in advance.

Alive But Dead – PRAVDA On the Russian theme, here’s a report into a woman who suddenly discovered that she was legally dead: Tatyana was so naïve when she believed she would be soon rehabilitated as living. Indeed, she was alive and still held her passport. However, as she realized later, once dead one can…

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Russia election candidate missing Ivan Rybkin, an opposition candidate in the Russian presidential elections, has disappeared a few days after his campaign ran a full-page ad in the Kommersant accusing Vladimir Putin of being in the pocket of big business. In a further attack, he gave an interview…

FT.com / World / Arab-Israel “The Bush administration is trying to enlist European support for a grand plan to reform the Arab and Islamic world and integrate it within a western security umbrella. American and European Union officials held a meeting in Washington last week on the so-called “greater Middle East” initiative, an evolving project…

Discovered a new and interesting webthing! It is called Delicious and it is a device for keeping one’s internet bookmarks – with the key feature that you give them search tags, so the whole thing becomes a searchable database of whatever its users find useful or interesting. Whatever you search out of it – for…

Just reviewing the site statistics, and what do I find among the googlers? Someone has searched for “arrogant american blog uk” and hit the Ranter. Strange, because it doesn’t appear in the first ten pages of results. Other amusing search strings include “Turkeyish money” and “Lord Brocket & the book he wrote in prison”. I…