By Ana Baric

Maglaj, a town of 27,000 in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, has been one of the hardest hit in the recent floods that have devastated Bosnia and Serbia.

Last week’s torrential rains were the heaviest in the region’s recorded history, with three months’ worth of rain falling in three days. , the floods triggered more than 3,000 landslides across the Balkans, in some cases displacing land mines left over from the 1992-‘95 war. 

More than 40 have died because of the natural disaster, and 500,000 have been evacuated or left their homes.

If circumstances weren’t difficult enough, flood victims worry that unscrupulous people are taking advantage of the natural disaster to fatten their own pockets.

By Ana Baric

The March 7 disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines plane one hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was strange enough.

The plane made contact with ground control 35,000 feet above the Gulf of Thailand and then, due to pilot error, mechanical failure, terrorism, or otherwise —it disappeared, leading to a multinational air and sea search that is still ongoing.

The peculiarity of this missing flight was compounded by the identity of two of its passengers: Italian Luigi Maraldi and Austrian Christian Kozel— two men whose passports were on board even though they were not.

The Baltic Center for Investigative Journalism Re:Baltica, an OCCRP partner, has published the last installment in its series about the health care system in Latvia.

By: Maria Virginia Olano

In Colombia, it is no secret that laws and rules there can be bent and moved around, especially with a couple of bills in your hand. Drivers know that getting stopped by road police is not really a problem, and that in the vast majority of cases, getting out of a ticket for any infraction should cost no more than a smile and 20,000 pesos (US$10). 

By Ana Baric

Azerbaijan is maintaining its usual approach to press “freedom”: sponsoring pro-regime media and unapologetically repressing critical journalism.