A roundup of some non-political news during this campaign period

This being campaign time, there's lots of politics to talk about, but some other news as well.

The Kremlin rejects a challenge and accepts a challenge 

In international news, it seems that Yulia Tymoshenko's cheerful bit of gauntlet-throwing in Foreign Affairs a little while back won't be getting a response from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the after all. Originally Lavrov was going to submit the Russian government's own Foriegn Affairs article, but when the issue was practically on its way to the printers, he suddenly retracted his submission.

The justification provided for this was a set of vague claims of "bias" and massive bowdlerizing of the article. The fact that it had already been run by him and approved for a second time prior to this outburst and the direct disagreement was over a subheading casts his claims in rather a suspicious light. In any case, the Russian Foreign Ministry went ahead and put up substantially the same piece on the Russian MoFA website. Read it here to try and see what the fuss was about.

In more direct foreign diplomacy, the Ukrainian government issued a different kind of challenge to its Russian counterpart. In an effort to improve relations, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry lifted the travel bans on the Russian politicians who agitated with the Crimean separatists and NATO-opposers a few years ago. Part of the gentlemen's agreement with Putin was that the Russian government would, in turn, lift the ban on politicians like Poroshenko who were being blocked due to... due to... well, pique, apparently, since they were never accused of any agitation moderately resembling that of Zatulin and Zhirinovsky. Instead they were accused of being from a government that had banned Russians. In any case, the Russian government has responded. And who knows what dastardly deeds Poroshenko might do. Bwahaha.

Sulfur spill

Outside of politics, the biggest trauma in Ukraine recently has been that a train-load of phosphorus being transported through Ukraine from Kazakhstan either derailed and caught fire or caught fire and derailed last week. Dozens died, according to the BBC and the number of hospitalized rose to about 140-150. Of course NUNS has not only been criticizing Ukrainian Railway, Ukrzaliznytsya, but also accusing the PoR Transportation Ministry for its "slow reaction" to the disaster. One might argue that being the first to lob off accusations is hardly a helpful response. On the other hand, the ministry's quick flip-flop from Minister Kuzmuk's initial response in which he made reference to Chornobyl and said, "we are again dealing with a case that can pose a real threat for the Ukrainian people", to shortly afterwards giving an all clear sign was rather disquieting.

And the economic news wrap-up 

Retail turnover rates are soaring. And more repetition of the good news in SigmaBleyzer's quite detailed report for June. Foreign banks are also investing heavily in Ukraine, which should also help stabilize that market more, provided the parent banks have spread their assets sufficiently and increase the overall market stability. Judging by the current interest rates at Ukrainian banks, this is a pretty strong probability.

Even moreso, not only have Ukrainians been making money in past weeks week, they'd also been pulling it out of the ground in Crimea.

This being an election year, I wonder which politician is going to claim credit for this Crimean treasure chest.