Society

United Russia party gained a majority of votes in a parliamentary election accompanied by alleged widespread violations. While observers report cases of forced voting and vote-rigging, Russian officials shift the blame to foreign media and NGOs. Their rhetoric is echoed by the pro-Russian disinformation media.

The inner city has always been a site of change and innovation. In times of COVID-19, the inner city has an opportunity to exploit its strengths – with digital retail concepts, innovative mobility solutions, and pragmatic site usage. The Fraunhofer IAO researchers see the inner city of the future as an innovation lab for developing and testing new concepts.

As the world remembers the victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, conspiracy theories about what \"really\" happened are resurfacing and continue to roam the Internet twenty years after the event, although most have been disproven and none confirmed by experts.

At the end of May, the IME wrote that it was high time for a ramp-up of vaccine efforts in Bulgaria. By this, we meant that the vaccination process should be made the first and foremost governmental priority, and that as many tools as possible should be sought and employed to speed up the pace. The reason was obvious. The country was substantially far behind achieving the set target – vaccinating 70% of the adult population by the end of August.

The rapid fall of the Afghan government and the hasty evacuation of refugees from Kabul\'s airport provided ample opportunity for disinformation actors and media to spread streams of anti-American, anti-NATO and anti-refugee narratives. Accordingly, disinformation proliferated in the Slovak information space regarding the recent events in Afghanistan.

In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus. In the same month, Bosnia and Herzegovina began implementing restrictive measures aimed at protecting the local population from the new virus. As in many other countries of the world, these measures were on the verge of not respecting human rights and caused numerous controversies.

Lockdowns and other restrictive measures to keep people in their homes and prevent socializing with others were introduced. But what if home is not a safe place? What if being locked down with a member of your family or a partner is the very definition of being unsafe and at risk of physical injury or psychological abuse?

Measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic have limited a number of fundamental rights to an unprecedented extent. The rights of economic activity, movement, assembly and religious worship have been subjected to the most severe restrictions. Here, however, lies the great danger of the gradual consolidation of a constitutional mithridatism.

In the country of the Vistula River fiction is more and more often surpassing reality. In fact, it becomes reality before Poles\' very eyes. Moreover, they begin to arrange themselves in it, stunned by events that would have been unimaginable for the average person just a few weeks before. However, Poles, who are accustomed to living in the fumes of absurdity, quickly tame the next shock and come to terms with it.

More different or similar? This was the question posed by the authors of the report \"Minding the Gap: Deepening Polarization in Poland and Hungary\" carried out by 21 Research Center and the Project: Poland. The study included two focus group interviews with residents of villages and small towns where Fidesz and PiS were the dominant political parties in the elections.