Pakistan blocks YouTube, a day after barring access to Facebook in a row over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

• May 20, 2010

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

Russia’s Deputy Premier Igor Sechin, taking direct aim at Middle Eastern oil producers, has urged Japan to increase its imports of Russian oil in addition to cooperating with his country on the development of its natural resources.

• 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

“What lessons can we learn from the Soviet collapse and apply to the current situation in Russia?
First, we must remember that Russia today is an oil-dependent economy. No one can accurately predict the fluctuations of oil prices. The collapse of the Soviet Union should serve as a lesson to those who construct policy based on the assumption that oil prices will remain perpetually high. It would seem that in our country, which has lived through the collapse of the late 1980s and early 1990s, this fact would be evident. But as soon as the prices went up again at the beginning of 2000 and in 2004 became comparable in real terms to those at the beginning of the 1980s, the idea that ‘high oil revenues are forever’ has gained an even wider acceptance.

• May 20, 2010

It is reported that Stroytransgaz has begun welding the linear part of the Taweelah-Fujairah gas pipeline a 244 kilometer, 48 inch facility in the United Arab Emirates

• May 19, 2010