Print, Video, Radio Journalist
VIDIN, Bulgaria — The European Union hardly basks in popular favor these days. But in this isolated corner of the bloc’s poorest periphery, leaders and locals on Friday celebrated a tangible benefit of membership — a $340 million bridge spanning the Danube that should help strengthen trade and ties between two impoverished members, Romania and Bulgaria. Continue reading “New Bridge Over Danube Helps Dissolve Old Enmities”
VARNA, Bulgaria — Early one morning this past winter, Plamen Goranov, a 36-year-old photographer, stood on the steps of City Hall in this once grand and now crumbling port city on the Black Sea and held up a sign demanding that the mayor and City Council resign. He then took a bottle of gasoline from his backpack, poured it over himself and set himself on fire. He died 11 days later in a hospital. Continue reading “With Many Despairing, Bulgaria Heads to Polls”
By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER
SOFIA — His enthronement as patriarch of Bulgaria, spiritual leader of millions of Orthodox believers here, was supposed to stir pride and moral togetherness in an impoverished country confronting a vacuum in political leadership and widespread economic pain.
Instead, the installation of His Holiness Neofit last month, in a ceremony replete with byzantine splendor, served as one more reminder that Bulgaria had never really thrown off the inheritance of 40 years of rigid Communist rule and all the duplicitous dealings that went with it. Continue reading “Bulgaria’s Unholy Alliances”
PRISTINA, Kosovo — Prime Minister Hashim Thaci is in a bind. His country’s largest and most lucrative enterprise, the state telecommunications company, is up for sale. The jostling among buyers is intense. Narrowing the bidders has hardly helped.
One bid is from a fund founded by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. Lobbying for another was James W. Pardew, the Clinton-era special envoy to the Balkans. Both former diplomats are among the Americans who hold the status of heroes here for their roles in the 1999 intervention that separated Kosovo from Serbia and created one of the world’s newest states. Continue reading “That Crush at Kosovo’s Business Door? The Return of U.S. Heroes”
A class called the “Basis of Secular Ethics” is popular among the students. (Photo: Matthew Brunwasser)
This year Russia required fourth graders across the country to take a religion class. There are six choices: Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, secular ethics or world religions. Most Russians consider themselves Orthodox Christians, but most did not choose that class for their children. Matthew Brunwasser reports.
Continue reading “Religion Class for Every 4th Grader in Russia”
It’s show time in the studio of the new Al RTV channel.
“Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh” says host Rustem Arifdghanov, a seasoned Azeri journalist who also heads the channel. He says the mission is to reconnect Russian Muslims with their faith after 70 years of enforced atheism during the Soviet era.
Continue reading “Al RTV, Russia’s First Islamic TV Channel”
Despite 70 years of atheist Communist rule, Russia remains a deeply conservative society with traditional Christian values. Pussy Riot’s “punk rock prayer” was not received well by most Russians. But the way state and church officials handled the punishment did not go over well either. Continue reading “Russia Remains Divided on the Pussy Riot Case”
What is the size of a large cookie pan, made out of baklava, and looks like a lumpy version of the famous Hope portrait of Barack Obama? The “Baracklava”.
The idea was cooked up in the Gulloglu baklava shop in Istanbul. In the shop’s six decades in business, only three other historical figures, all Turks, have been so honored. Owner Nadir Gullu says the portraits require enormous craftsmanship. Continue reading “In Turkey, President Obama in 55 Layers of Pastry”
This is what extremism sounds like, according to Russian law. At the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in St. Petersburg, worshippers start their bible study session with a song. No other religious group has been hit so hard by Russia’s controversial anti-extremism law. In the past three years, the church reports that state authorities have arrested or detained more than a thousand believers, searched 148 homes and buildings, and banned 68 publications. Continue reading “Extremism Law Curbs Religious Freedom in Russia”
ISTANBUL — There’s not a lot of female energy in the Directorate of the Istanbul Mufti. This large, blocky Ottoman-era building houses the state bureaucratic entity in charge of every aspect of Islam here, from hiring imams and writing their weekly sermons to paying their salaries and approving designs for new mosques.Much of what female energy there is comes from the small, tidy office of Kadriye Avci Erdemli, who three years ago became the first female deputy mufti of Istanbul and one of Turkey’s highest-ranking female religious officials.
© 2000-2025 Matthew Brunwasser | Theme: Baskerville 2