Smoking decrease by county in the US, attitudes towards Russia in breakaway provinces

Two interesting pages for the statistically inclined:

This one from the New York Times showing smoking rates by county between 1996 and 2012 in the United States. While many parts of the country still smoke heavily, I still haven't been able to find a single county where the rate has stayed the same or risen since 1996. Can you? Feel free to find out for usif you have the time to mouseover every single county in the US.

This one from the Washington Post on attitudes towards Russia in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria. Transnistria is particularly important at the moment. I wonder though if Russia wouldn't be doing Moldova a (unintended) favour were it to annex Transnistria, which unlike Crimea has never really been under Moldovan control. Moldova only loses 12% of its area without Transnistria, and the remainder would be mostly Moldovan, Ukrainian, and Gagauz. The Russian percentage drops from 9.4 to 1.68 when Transnistria is removed, and this becomes a larger possibility.

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Page F30 reader poll results on a potential union of Romania and Moldova

Time to take off one of the two polls sitting on the right. This one only received 70 votes over some 2+ weeks, a reflection of the obscurity of the subject. The results show an even split between the three options, though because the first two options favour a union of the two countries we have a total of 60% support for some sort of union between the two, either with or without Transnistria.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF A UNION BETWEEN ROMANIA AND MOLDOVA?

Moldova including Transnistria should join Romania 21 (30%)

Moldova without Transnistria should join Romania 21 (30%)

Moldova shouldn't join Romania 25 (35%)

Other 3 (4%)

Votes so far: 70

Not sure what the other votes were for, but it could have been one of the other plans laid out: Romania plus Moldava without Transnistria, and a land exchange with Ukraine near the Black Sea.

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Welt Online article about Transnistria (the breakaway region in Moldova) in German

Welt Online has a fairly detailed first person perspective on Transnistria, the breakaway region in the east of Moldova that is a bit reminiscent of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia in being strongly pro-Russian and willing to use military force to separate, but also quite different in that it borders on Ukraine and Moldova, whereas the other two share a direct border with Russia which is what made it so easy for Russian troops to move in last year during the war with Georgia. This puts Transnistria in a kind of no-man's land:


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As you can see, eastern Moldova is nowhere close to Russia. Transnistria is also markedly different from Moldova's other ethnic region called Gagauzia - instead of fighting a war and ending in a cold stalemate, Moldova and Gagauzia talked their issues over and now Gagauzia is an autonomous territory within Moldova and nobody has to point guns at each other.

Since the article is pretty long I won't comment on it except to say that it's definitely worth reading for those interested in Eastern Europe and all these tiny autonomous regions that most have never heard of but those living there would be willing to die for. Google has a translation here that is as always slightly awkward but good enough for the task.

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