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Vilnius

Baltic ‘beet down’: Latvia and Lithuania clash over cold pink soup

Food

Cold beet soup is a culinary staple in Latvia and Lithuania and across Eastern Europe. This year, Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, hosted its “Pink Soup Festival” celebrating the dish. But the city’s tourism agency also started a public beef with Latvia, claiming that the Lithuanian version of the soup is better.

man at podium

Ukraine wins G7 security pledges but its path to NATO membership remains unclear 

Ukraine
Protesters hold signs

‘We cannot close the door or turn the page’: Belarusian dissidents in Lithuania fear Lukashenko’s crackdown

Refugees
Leonid Volkov wears a white shirt and raises his hand in the air while speaking in front of a blue and white background.

‘Fighting corruption in Russia is now being called extremism,’ says Alexei Navalny’s top strategist

Global Politics
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a candidate for the presidential elections in Belarus, greets people during a meeting in her support in Brest, Belarus, Aug. 2, 2020.

Belarus opposition leader: ‘We are fighting for the future of our children’

Global Politics
The author's 3-year-old daughter Leila has been occupying herself during the "stay at home" order in Boston amid the coronavirus outbreak by making cards and beaded necklaces for her preschool friends. 

How families around the world talk coronavirus with kids

COVID-19

It’s hard explaining to kids what COVID-19 is, much less the new restrictions that come with it. Reporter Ari Daniel spoke to a bunch of families all over the world about their challenges and how they’re making do.  

A sunset with the silhouette of a mosque and man approaching

How 16 Americans found family, faith and their immigrant roots — generations after their parents left their homelands

Immigration Rewind

Through war and Islamophobia, a generation thought they might have lost their histories and faith in Eastern Europe. But, unexpectedly, they found it again.

Jews digging a trench in Ponar forest, in which they were later buried, after being shot

Science confirms the incredible story of Lithuania’s Holocaust escape tunnel

Culture

More than 70 years ago, a group of Jewish prisoners dug a tunnel using mostly their hands and spoons to escape their Nazi captors. A team of archaeologists has recently discovered the tunnel in Ponar forest outside of Vilnius, Lithuania. The discovery is the subject of a new documentary.

European Humanities University, a Belarussian liberal arts school that's located across the border in Lithuania

When Belarus closed its last liberal arts school, the university went into exile

Education

The European Humanities University is a Belarussian liberal arts school. But it’s now operating in Lithuania.

Elena Narbutaitė, Menachem Kaiser and Jake Levine, October 15, 2010, preparing bagels for the first public bagel party and presentation of the Vilnius Bagel Project. Yalta Restaurant kitchen, Vilnius, Lithuania.

Bagels disappeared from Lithuania after WWII … but now they’re back

Food

When Menachem Kaiser discovered that the bagel had disappeared from Lithuania, along with most of the Jewish culture, he and some friends decided to bring it back.