• blogTO looks at deserted Mirvish Village.
• Crooked Timber reenages with the Rachel Carson and DDT myth.
• The Crux looks at the Mandela Effect, exploring false memories.
• Dangerous Minds makes the case for the musical genius of Bobbie Gentry.
• From the Heart of Europe's Nicholas Whyte recounts his visit to Albania's bunker museum.

• Centauri Dreams considers, among other things, studies of Alpha Centauri.
• D-Brief talks about the unexpected chill of Venus' poles.
• The Dragon's Tales shares a photo of the San Francisco shoreline.
• Far Outliers notes the rare achievements of Michael the Brave.
• Joe. My. God. notes the recent finding by an American court that transgendered students are ( Read more... )

Bloomberg's Andra Timu and Irina Vilcu note how Romania is trying to benefit from uncertainty in Poland.

Romania’s finance chief sees an opening for her nation to become eastern Europe’s go-to investment destination as nerves jangle over government policies in Poland, until recently the region’s top performer ( Read more... )

Euractiv notes the unsurprising fact that migration from Kosovo, arguably the poorest country in Europe, has recently spiked.

There is no precise information on the number of Albanians who ave left Kosovo. Estimates in early February cite several hundred leaving daily. According to data provided by security forces, over the past two months, more ( Read more... )

I didn't link to this important news, reported by the CBC among many others. Is it too much to hope that this might lead to a thawing in intra-Yugoslav relations?

The top court of the United Nations ruled Tuesday that Serbia and Croatia did not commit genocide against each other's people during the bloody 1990s wars sparked by the breakup of the ( Read more... )

Spiegel International notes the new official concern in Germany about Russian influence in southeastern Europe. Serbia, embittered by its losses in the Yugoslav wars and traditionally pro-Russian, comes out as an object of particular concern, but Bosnia (due to Republika Srpska) and Bulgaria (due to historical leanings and current Russian ( Read more... )

Mike Blanch field at MacLean's reports that Romanian and Bulgarian upset with Canadian visa policies might hinder the passage of the Canada-EU free trade agreement.

As Prime Minister Stephen Harper prepares to celebrate the end of Canada’s free-trade negotiations with Europe on Friday, there is persistent concern that two unhappy eastern European ( Read more... )

• Al Jazeera notes the rivalry between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, observes claims of persecution by evangelical Christians of followers of traditional African religions in Brazil, notes that separatism is unpopular in Scotland's border regions, considers the problems of a beetle theme park in the penumbra of Japan's Fukushima, looks at a ( Read more... )

Transition Online's Bulgarian writer, Boyko Vassilev, writes about the soft power that Russia enjoys in Bulgaria--and, by modest extension of the writer's intent, in post-Communist regions and populations which didn't see a rapid turnaround after 1989. The young generation remembers the era of transition and not the era of Communism, and so its ( Read more... )

• The Burgh Diaspora's Jim Russell notes how Brazil is using the Afro-Brazilian majority legacy of the transatlantic slave trade to justify the construction of new transatlantic links with Africa.
• Crooked Timber comments upon the Irish anti-abortion laws that just cost a woman her life and the homophobia of the Reagan administration that made HIV/AIDS ( Read more... )