Kyrgyzstan's interim leader, Roza Otunbayeva, will likely remain president of the Central Asian nation until December 2011 after the government cancelled plans for presidential elections to be held in October.

• May 20, 2010

Russia is exploiting U.S. and European inattention to reassert its influence in the former Soviet republics, spending more than $50 billion to turn the “near abroad” into an engine of economic and political power.

• May 20, 2010

Already wielding its economic might to become a major source of capital for Canada’s oil sands, China has struck a deal to help the province of Saskatchewan develop its burgeoning natural gas and crude assets.

• May 20, 2010

The Kremlin rarely approaches EU-Russia summits with much enthusiasm, but there are signs that this may change in anticipation of the next summit in Rostov-on-Don on May 31.

• May 20, 2010

The eurozone's single currency plummets against the US dollar, falling below $1.22 for the first time since April 2006.

• May 19, 2010

Russia's on-again, off-again plan to pursue World Trade Organization (WTO) membership bid jointly with Kazakhstan and Belarus (first announced in June 2009) remains up in the air.

• May 19, 2010

Ukraine’s credit ratings were raised at Standard & Poor’s on improvements in the country’s policy coordination and after a Russian gas subsidy agreement helped boost the government’s debt outlook.

• May 18, 2010

Hopes are high that the deal brokered by Brazil and Turkey to turn Iran's controversial enriched uranium supplies into fuel rods outside the Islamic Republic will be a major step towards solving the on-going stand-off.

• May 18, 2010