I have written another piece on the scandal, this time with my CEPA think-tank hat on. It is called Lithuania: Hung Out to Dry?

Europe according to Hungarians (does anyone have these for other countries? Lithuania? Russia? Ukraine? Romania? It would be fun to collect as many of these as possible)

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You can go to http://en.tackfilm.se/ and make a film featuring anyone you like as a “hero”. Just for the sake of example I’ve done it here for Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the Estonian president (who is Swedish born). It is amusing and addictive and I strongly recommend it. 

Another piece from my legal-affairs beatPrenuptial agreements For poorerMar 25th 2010 From The Economist print edition English courts used to ignore prenuptial agreements. Not any more LONDON is the divorce capital of the world, for two reasons. It is home to many foreigners, often themselves in cross-border marriages. And it has a divorce law that—at …

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The sale of the Independent Bought for a songMar 25th 2010 From The Economist print edition A Russian tycoon buys an ailing British newspaper ALEXANDER LEBEDEV was a rising star in the KGB in the dying days of the cold war. All he will say now about his time in the Soviet spy service’s London …

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Europe.view What’s in a name?Mar 25th 2010 From Economist.com It is time for the most tedious dispute in the Balkans to be settledIN THE headlines about Europe’s economic woes, one country stands out. Its public finances are a disaster. It has systematically fiddled its statistics. Its overpaid, underworked public-sector employees are a laughing stock across …

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According to Vedomosti, last year Russians bought 500,000 baseball bats and TWO balls.http://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article/2010/03/24/228992 (Hat-tip Mikhail Korchemkin for pointing this out)

Estonia is (Pravda reports so it must be true) launching a new campaign for the assimilation of the Russian-speaking population. The Russians residing in Estonia will be pushed towards changing their Russian surnames to Estonian surnames. The administration of the Baltic nation decided to use such a measure to conceal its absolute inability to struggle …

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Just watched this interesting film “Vienui Vieni” in Lithuanian. Shot in black-and-white in 2003, it has (perhaps unconscious) echoes of Soviet propaganda films but with the plot the other way round. Very moving. Amazing that the widow of Lithuania’s most famous partisan, Juozas Lukša-Daumantas, is still alive.