Important elections...

Where? Mongolia, obviously...

This is after Mongolia gently tapped the headlines (hit is too strong a word) with their protests for new elections at the end of March, for which they apparently took inspiration from events in Kyrgyzstan, the BBC reported (article here). The BBC's coverage termed Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan 'neighbours', which was an interesting geographical stretch of the imagination (China got lost somewhere), but hell, it's all relative and we're only talking about a few thousand kilometres out in the back of beyond...

Anyhow, you'll be delighted to know that an ex-communist won a convincing victory in the first round with 53.4% of the vote and a high turnout. More details from the BBC here and Aljazeera has a nice article on the elections more generally, complete with a yurt (but not a yak in sight...).

Speaking of Aljazeera, they've got some very sharp political cartoons on the site - well worth a look for a few minutes, especially the AI one on the reality of human rights.