Dana Reizniece-Ozola is Latvia’s Minister of Finance. Before assuming this post, she served as the minister for economic affairs from November 2014-February 2016. She was a representative in the Saeima, Latvia’s parliament, for the Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS) from 2010-2015. While in the Saeima, Reizniece-Ozola was chairperson of the Commission on Education, Culture and Science, member of the Legal Affairs Commission, and member of the European Affairs Commission. Ms. Reizniece-Ozola is an accomplished chess player and has held the title of Woman Grandmaster since 2001. In this interview, she talks about the glass ceiling and gender equality in Latvia.
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Two days after the rental site Airbnb announced it would stop listing properties in illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, an Airbnb official told The Times of Israel on November 21 that it would consider dropping listings in Western Sahara as well. “In the statement we issued on Monday, we noted that we have developed a framework for evaluating how we should treat listings in occupied territories around the world. Western Sahara is one example of a place where we will use this framework,” the official said.
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While Donald Trump has come out in support of the Saudi regime, several European nations are taking action to hold the murderers of Jamal Khashoggi accountable. On Monday, November 19, the German government issued a travel ban on the 18 Saudis implicated in the murder and halted previously approved arms exports to Saudi Arabia, Deutsche Welle reported. The decision was made in close consultation with France and Great Britain.
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Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second largest city, will be the European Capital of Culture in 2019. The designation of Capital of Culture, alongside Matera, Italy, is a remarkable achievement for a city that has gone through a major transformation in the past decades. The city has also been successful in branding itself as an alternative to the capital Sofia for tourism, business, work, and play. The designation might even put Plovdiv on the map as a main travel destination in Europe.
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Last Friday, mosques throughout the northern Caucasus commemorated the 75th anniversary of the mass deportation of the Karachays to Central Asia by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Between November 2 and November 5, 1943, some 70,000 Karachais, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group of the North Caucasus, were deported in cattle train cars to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, because they allegedly collaborated with Nazi Germany.
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Southeast Europe – Zuidoost-Europa correspondent
