When I was at university back in 1988 or so, I, together with a couple of fellow politics students laughed when we heard that one of the lecturers in the department forecast that Czechoslovakia would be a member of the EU by 2000. The facts that he was only out by four years and that he had failed to forecast the break-up of the country are not really so vital - as a piece of political forecasting, it's not bad.
The reason for this preamble is that, in a similar mind-boggling political event (as viewed from 1988), Romania joined NATO on 29th March , and now our own dear, officially neutral Moldova has the world's most heavily- armed military alliance on its border. What impact this has on Transdniestr will become apparent over the coming months.
As to what has happened actually in Moldova this month, the Internet went down in embassies and companies, accourding to Reuters, and some people got rather upset. They were probably in the middle of a game of Internet pool, I would imagine.
Understandably there's always concern over the wheat situation in the country. This report, from Agrimarketinfo is optimistic, whilst the same website also reports in the need to import to maintain reserves. There's some disturbing news of difficulties encountered by some Muslim worshippers in Chisinau on this Norwegian Website ; The Union Network International has this illustrative report on child-trafficking , and yet more on Trans-Dnestr, courtesy of Ros Consulting may be found here.
