• blogTO notes the heavy level of pollution in Toronto Harbour following recent rains, and suggests Toronto is set to get gigabit Internet speeds.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about her recent vacation in Donegal.
• Centauri Dreams revisits Robert L. Forward's Starwisp probe.
• Crooked Timber speculates that there is hope for rapid action on ( Read more... )

At Demography Matters I have a post up noting the emergent western Balkans route for unauthorized migrants.

Bloomberg's Lenka Ponikelska writes about the continued appeal to some in non-Eurozone central Europe of membership in the single currency.

In the Czech Republic, the prime minister said on Wednesday that joining the euro soon would help the economy after the president challenged the central bank’s long-standing resistance with a vow to appoint ( Read more... )

• blogTO takes a look at the reasons for the failure of the Toronto Sushi Festival, a failure that included the blog's own misrepresentation of the event's success.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly argues that, in our media-saturated environment, paying attention to everything is exhausting.
• Centauri Dreams and D-Brief react to Dawn's arrival at ( Read more... )

Torontoist's Jamie Bradburn takes a look at the now almost entirely disappeared cluster of Hungarian restaurants on Bloor Street West towards the Annex. Vintage ads are shared there.

Walking into the Country Style Hungarian Restaurant along Bloor Street in the Annex is more than dining on central European cuisine served on checkered tablecloths. ( Read more... )

Bloomberg's Zoltan Simon notes that the surging value of the Swiss franc has left many central European countries, with large numbers of homeowners having mortgages taken out in the newly-strong currency, trying to figure out how to learn from Hungary's earlier experience.

Governments from Poland to Croatia are under pressure to mimic Hungary’s ( Read more... )

Zoltan Simon of Bloomberg notes how the Hungarian government of Viktor Orban is hastily back-pedalling away from pro-Russian rhetoric, at least partly out of a desire to placate Hungary's major investor Germany and the European Union to which Hungary has belonged for a decade. Illiberalism has its limits.

Hungarian premier Viktor Orban is trying ( Read more... )

• Al Jazeera notes the effects of population aging worldwide, observes the quarantining of four individuals possibly exposed to Ebola, comments on the huge costs associated with reconstruction in eastern Ukraine, and reports on a conference held by the Vatican on the plight of Middle Eastern Christians.
• Bloomberg notes the recovery of house prices in ( Read more... )

• Al Jazeera notes the quilombos of Brazil founded by escaped slaves and looks at the strength of the separatist vote in Scotland's largest city of Glasgow.
• Bloomberg notes continuing tensions between North Korea and Japan over Japanese abductees, looks at Russian state subsidies to sanctions-hit companies, suggests a softening of Polish foreign ( Read more... )

Wired's Margaret Rhodes describes how colourful houses in late-Communist Hungary were a sign of rebellion.

There’s a children’s book from 1977 called The Big Orange Splot. In it, all the houses on one block look the same. Until one day, when a pelican drops a bucket of orange paint on one roof. Instead of painting over it, and returning to the ( Read more... )