Nearly half of Latvian residents login to Facebook daily. Just as many watch YouTube videos. Every fifth uses Instagram and about 60,000 people regularly post on Twitter, according to the audience research by Kantar TNS. Political parties are no exception and are actively promoting themselves before upcoming Latvian parliamentary elections in October, 2018. Country’s anti-corruption bureau (KNAB) is tasked with monitoring the political spending on social networks.

Since the Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the increased NATO military presence in the Baltic states, 20 of Baltic residents have been detained under suspicions of spying, mainly for Russia. For Latvia, the two are the first cases of espionage since the restoration of independence from the Soviet Union. Who are they and why so few?

Latvia is slowly aging. Schools are shut down and transformed into old folks homes. By 2030, almost half of Latvia’s inhabitants are projected to be over the age of 50 while the number of working people will drop by one fifth. The small Baltic nation of almost 2 million people is facing a political choice. Will it be a smaller, older and much quieter country? Or will it be a more vibrant, younger country, but with a lot of guest workers? Re:Baltica investigates five different scenarios for Latvia’s future development.

Negative memories of forced migration during the Soviet occupation hold back a discussion how to fill predicted 35,000 labour gap.

Latvia will lose 20 percent of its current workforce by 2030. Automation is floated as the solution to the impending labor shortages  to overshadow the debate about low wages or foreign workforce.

This is the English version of Inga Spriņģe’s opinion piece for Norway’s newspaper Dagbladet on why should they care about being called paedophiles.

A couple of years ago an article on Facebook, shared widely by several of my educated, urbanite, latte-drinking friends, captured my attention. Under the headline “Democracy with the flavour of paedophilia”, a famous Latvian children doctor-anesthetist who on a daily basis faces grossly injured children whose parents has been negligent, was ranting about the rotten, decadent Western Europe ruining family values. He singled out Norway as the worst example of that – stating that the Norwegian education minister promotes introductory lessons about incest in the primary schools “because incest is a social norm in Norway”.

Who is polluting the Baltic internet in Russian?

6AM. Six men are drinking moonshine at the shared table in one of the cells of the largest prison in Latvia. None of them cares about guards because often overnight there is just one for 400 prisoners.

Andrejs Ērglis, one of Latvia’s most famous doctors, is from a well known medical family and combines professional talent with personal charm. In his own words, he has raised Latvian interventional heart surgery to a world level. But how can a poor country with one of Europe’s lowest healthcare budgets also be among the world leaders in expensive heart operations using stents, the microscopic structures used to repair damaged arteries? And why, even though it spends so much on such procedures, does Latvia not also lead in reducing the number of premature deaths, with heart disease still the country’s main killer?