If you never lived under a communist regime or one of today’s mutations and always wondered how a communist-style smear campaign might look, consider the wonderful investigative work aired this week by Belarusian state television (BT).

What is it about Belarus that brings out the best in photojournalists?

There seems to be more than a touch of envy in all of this outrage over bloated pay for some government officials.

Given the fear factor, it’s hard to imagine all this new online activity making a difference without many other developments occurring “offline” at the same time.

It’s times like this that make one wonder if sometimes countries such as Hungary aren’t better off having opportunistic crooks in power who take their share and leave than ideologues that seem to be willing to run their nations into the ground.

However unlikely it would have seemed, Havel even excelled in the area of economic affairs during his presidency.

Nowadays it seems that everywhere you look corruption is the buzzword of Czech society.

People might not be cognizant of the enormous trepidation that some Slovaks feel over the prospect of Fico’s return.

A crusader against bride kidnapping has developing an effective educational program to rid Kyrgyzstan of the practice.

After Livia Klausova’s foundation cut off funding from a kids’ magazine that had apparently offended her, a wave of both prominent and ordinary Czechs come to the rescue.

Bride kidnapping is such a provocative topic that I guess I figured that the practice had declined in Central Asia since I had heard less of it lately. How wrong I apparently was.

During a few days in Poland earlier this week, I conducted an unscientific poll among several people that I met, asking their opinion of Janusz Marian Palikot, one of the more interesting characters to emerge on the Central European political scene in the last decade.

I’m one of those people that has difficulty writing anything negative about Vaclav Havel, so this was a tough post to write.

Recent incidents—violent attacks by young Roma, extremist marches on largely Roma-inhabited housing estates, locals complaining of Roma criminality—have finally brought the ghetto situation more out in the open.

Living in Prague, one can easily forget how important remittances are to so many people in TOL’s coverage region.

The Czech daily Mlada fronta DNES today publicized its analysis of the recent diplomatic dispatches released by Wikileaks that concern the Czech Republic.

An interesting strategy is afoot to get Central European governments more involved in taking a tougher line on Burma within the EU.

The Polish prosecutor general’s office also passed along bank information to Minsk that led to the arrest of a human rights activist.

What happens when a media outlet not only refuses to defend colleagues that have run into trouble with the authorities, but actually verbally attacks them and incites threats of violence?