how did the Singer Youssou N'Dour get on in his Senegal presidential bid

This week the Senegal elections took place.
IFES has a quick guide to the basics.
The official national press agency has the latest news in French.

For some user discussion and online videos see the site created by L'association des Blogueurs du Sénégal
Google also has a special page with news stories and discussions of web trends.
More news stories can be found on all.africa.com
France 24
Le Monde
and the New York Times
Finally further English commentary, including a recent briefing paper can be found on the Chatham house website.

Yemen elections 2012

The Yemen presidential elections were held on 21st february. As there was only one candidate the results focussed on voter turnout. for discussion of the system try these resources.
Yemen Fox gives a glowing account of the elections.However , the BBC reported violence.
Al Jazeera has a blog with images and coment.
For background information on the political situation see the
IFES site which has basic facts about the electoral system.
International IDEA website has some publications

Turkmenistan elections- were they a sham?

Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov improves on his performance in 2007 election, but there are accusations of fraud.
See some commentary on politics in the region on the Chatham House website.
Eurasia net has articles and discussion
The Voice of Russia website has coverage in English. However do remeber this site is supported by the Russian government.
other monitoring bodies covering human rights in the region include:
Amnesty International
Human Rights Watch
Transparency International rated it as one of the most corrupt nations in 2010
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranked Turkmenistan at 165 out of 167 countries of the world in its Democracy Index for 2011

NDI has also established programmes to improve the state of democracy in the region.

Former finance leader winds Finland's presidential election

Last week the winner of Finland's presidential election was announced. Here are some recommended sites for finding out more.
Ministry of Justice Finland. Has the resiults for each round of voting plus background on the system used.
For up to date news coverage and analysis see
Helsingin Sanomat - International Edition. English Language analysis

Finland press. Other links to Finnish language resources.

For examples of past electoral results see Statistics Finland which has a large election data section.
The European elections database also has a section for Finland where you can find historic materials.
Electoral geography has some interesting mappings of past and recent elecions.