Man named in local media as Catalin Denciu transferred to hospital in Belgium with 40% burns
A doctor left badly burned in a Romanian hospital fire that left 10 dead was been hailed as a hero after it emerged he had tried to help Covid-19 patients to safety.
After suffering second and third degree burns to 40%, the doctor, named in local media as Catalin Denciu, was transferred to Belgium’s Queen Astrid military hospital on Sunday for specialised treatment.
Continue reading...A tenacious team of sports journalists and a persistent whistleblower turn this documentary into a newsroom drama as thrilling as All the President’s Men
Collective begins with profoundly upsetting footage filmed by clubbers on their phones of the fire that broke out in 2015 at a crowded Bucharest nightclub, Colectiv. A Romanian band is singing angrily – “Fuck all your wicked corruption. It’s been there since our inception” – before stopping abruptly to ask if anyone has a fire extinguisher. What appeared to be a striking firework display above the heads of the musicians turns out to be a fire, and within seconds flames have engulfed the building and teenagers are running for their lives.
It is a shocking sequence, but it is not the most disturbing element of an extraordinary documentary that reveals a staggering degree of corruption running through Romania’s health system. The fire left 27 dead and 180 injured, but in the weeks that followed another 37 people died from wounds that should not have been life-threatening, many killed by infections picked up in hospital.
Continue reading...Books worth more than £2.5m found in Romania after Mission Impossible-style theft
Hundreds of internationally important and irreplaceable books worth more than £2.5m that were stolen in a daring heist by abseiling burglars have been returned to their rightful owners.
Metropolitan police announced the successful conclusion on Tuesday of a near four-year police operation investigating the Mission Impossible-style theft of books that included rare works by Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo and the 18th-century Spanish painter Francisco de Goya.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Thomas Lishman charged with prominent local figures in ‘landmark human rights case’
A former British army officer is facing up to 13 years’ imprisonment in Romania for facilitating an ayahuasca ceremony in which the hallucinogenic Amazonian healing medicine was consumed by prominent figures, including the former head of the country’s secret police.
Thomas Lishman, 58, was arrested on 15 December last year as police and special forces raided a retreat centre outside Bucharest at dawn. It followed an evening where attendees sat in a circle meditating and drinking ayahuasca, a brew which is said to lead to mystical life-changing experiences. Some were later taken to hospital to provide blood samples.
Continue reading...Global Witness campaigners warn of risk of further killings during Covid-19 lockdowns
A record number of people were killed last year for defending their land and environment, according to research that highlights the routine murder of activists who oppose extractive industries driving the climate crisis and the destruction of nature.
More than four defenders were killed every week in 2019, according to an annual death toll compiled by the independent watchdog Global Witness, amid growing evidence of opportunistic killings during the Covid-19 lockdown in which activists were left as “sitting ducks” in their own homes.
Continue reading...The coronavirus threat facing fruit and vegetable pickers flown in from quarantined Romania underlines Europe’s inequalities
White asparagus is late April’s delicacy across much of north-west Europe. In Germany the pale spears of the Spargel are cherished as “white gold”, their arrival each year marked by festivals and celebrations. But Germany alone needs 300,000 seasonal workers to harvest its crops. Over the past 10 years most of these workers have come from Romanian villages where seasonal migration is one of the few sources of income.
Related: Romanian fruit pickers flown to UK amid crisis in farming sector
Continue reading...Europe now centre of pandemic, says WHO, as Spain prepares for state of emergency
The World Health Organization has stepped up its calls for intensified action to fight the coronavirus pandemic, imploring countries “not to let this fire burn”, as Spain said it would declare a 15-day state of emergency from Saturday.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said Europe – where the virus is present in all 27 EU states and has infected 25,000 people – had become the centre of the epidemic, with more reported cases and deaths than the rest of the world combined apart from China.
Continue reading...Country’s lack of meat processing facilities means livestock must be shipped to international markets – at a high cost to both shepherds and welfare
Gheorghe Dănulețiu, also known as Ghiță Ciobanul (Ghiță the shepherd), has more than 500,000 followers on Facebook after he featured in an advertising campaign that went viral, but he leads the modest life of a traditional shepherd.
Looking after 1,500 sheep in western Romania, Dănulețiu’s life changes with the seasons. During lambing in spring, he barely sleeps four hours a night while in winter he leads his sheep in a three- to four-week journey from the mountains down to graze in the valleys.
Continue reading...Two rangers have been killed in three months and whistleblowers face intimidation and ostracism
In the hamlet of Deia, nestled in the forested hills of Suceava county in northern Romania, Ilie Bucșă and his brother Dumitru have become pariahs. Recently an angry mob attacked the brothers, leaving Ilie with concussion and wounds all over his body. Old friends cross the road to avoid the brothers, having been warned to stay away or face losing their jobs. One night, someone even poured anti-freeze into the brothers’ fish pond, killing half their fish.
Their sin? They have been methodically filing complaints about illegal logging in the area.
Continue reading...Brain scans of Romanian orphans adopted in UK show early neglect left its mark
Children who experience severe deprivation early in life have smaller brains in adulthood, researchers have found.
The findings are based on scans of young adults who were adopted as children into UK families from Romania’s orphanages that rose under the regime of the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu.
Continue reading...Guardian investigation in 2017 revealed Romanian women were being exploited on farms
An Italian court has sentenced a Romanian man to 20 years in prison for human trafficking after a Guardian investigation revealed that thousands of women from Romania were being raped and used as forced labour on farms in Sicily.
In what investigators claim is Italy’s first conviction for labour trafficking of European citizens, Lucian Milea, 41, was convicted last week of running a trafficking ring that recruited dozens of women in Romania who were then forced into exploitation and prostitution on farms in Ragusa, Sicily.
Continue reading...Bucharest’s notorious Palace of the Parliament bears witness to the folly of dictator shot dead on Christmas Day 1989
Bucharest’s most notorious building sits atop a small hill in the centre of the city, appearing squat despite its 84-metre height, due to its vast length and breadth. The Palace of the Parliament, as it is now called, is a monument to dictatorial folly whose benefactor was executed before he could see it completed.
Christmas Day will mark 30 years since Romania’s communist-era dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu, was tried and shot dead along with his wife, as the last revolution of 1989 swept through what was perhaps the communist bloc’s most repressive state.
Continue reading...Crew of the Queen Hind saved with 32 sheep but work continues to free thousands stuck in ship’s hold
Rescuers were struggling to save 14,600 sheep after the cargo ship they were being carried on capsized in the Black Sea off the coast of Romania.
The Queen Hind, bound for Saudi Arabia, overturned on Sunday shortly after leaving Romania’s Midia port.
Continue reading...Funfairs are a loud and colourful reminder that summer has come to an end and, for many poorer families, one of the few affordable public entertainment events of the year
Continue reading...‘The light was soft … They were so graceful. They are the last peasants, the last of their kind’
In 2012, I travelled to Transylvania to document what is effectively the last remaining bucolic landscape of Europe. England, for example, has lost most of its hay meadows because of large-scale agriculture, but in Romania this kind of small-scale sustainable way of farming persists. It survived the Ceaușescu regime. It survived the EU. Today, however, it is a vanishing way of life as young people increasingly choose to migrate to western Europe in search of work and faster money.
I spent three weeks in Maramureş in the northern Carpathian mountains, exploring life in six tiny hamlets, each with no more than 500 inhabitants. It was August, the height of the haymaking season. Families worked in the fields from dawn to dusk. These women were from a village called Breb. I saw their haystacks from the road as my translator and I drove past. I shouted “stop!” and ran out of the car towards them. They smiled at me, but we didn’t talk, they just carried on with what they were doing. It was late in the day, and they were getting ready to go home. The women wear trousers to make hay because the wind blows their skirts up. Here, they were putting their headscarves and their traditional skirts back on. Then they gathered their baskets, in which they’d brought their lunch, and walked back to the village. I followed. The light was very soft, and the shadows long.
Cutting hay and stacking it is physically demanding, I tried doing it myself and failed miserably
Continue reading...President blames rescheduling on Mette Frederiksen’s comments ‘that she would have no interest in discussing purchase’
National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre confirmed, via a tweet, that he spoke with President Trump today about gun laws, and called him a “strong” president.
The Atlantic reported earlier this afternoon that Trump had called LaPierre to reassure him that any background check legislation was now off the table.
I spoke to the president today. We discussed the best ways to prevent these types of tragedies. @realDonaldTrump is a strong #2A President and supports our Right to Keep and Bear Arms! – Wayne LaPierre
Donald Trump said on Tuesday evening that he is postponing a scheduled meeting with the Danish prime minister over her comments on his proposal for the US to buy the island.
Denmark owns Greenland, and the country has said the island is not for sale. Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, said on Sunday: “Greenland is not for sale. Greenland is not Danish. Greenland belongs to Greenland. I strongly hope that this is not meant seriously.”
....The Prime Minister was able to save a great deal of expense and effort for both the United States and Denmark by being so direct. I thank her for that and look forward to rescheduling sometime in the future!
Continue reading...Police chief sacked after reports emerge about plight of 15-year-old who was later murdered
Several thousand protesters rallied in Bucharest on Saturday after Romania’s police chief was fired amid an outcry over the police response to the murder of a 15-year-old girl.
The teen had made three emergency calls to report her own kidnapping and given clues to her whereabouts. Critics allege that officials failed to take the alert seriously and finally reacted too late to help save the girl, identified as Alexandra.
Continue reading...Protesters in Sibiu have been staging a daily demonstration outside the ruling PSD party’s HQ
Every day when the Lutheran church bell strikes noon, people fall silent in a leafy street in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu. For more than 500 days, in snow, drizzle and scorching sun, a group of residents has staged a silent protest in the centre of the picturesque city. Always at the same time, and always at the same place: outside the headquarters of Romania’s ruling Social Democrat party (PSD), which is embroiled in corruption scandals and accused by Brussels of flouting democratic values.
The message to the PSD is simple, says Ciprian Ciocan: “We know what you are doing and we are watching every move that you do, and we are here to defend the rule of law.” He says he never knows how many people will show up to protest.
Continue reading...As EU leaders gather in Transylvania under Romania’s presidency, Liviu Dragnea is increasingly vexing the bloc
European leaders will gather on Thursday for a summit in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu, the showpiece event of Romania’s six-month presidency of the EU, the first time the country has taken on the role since it joined in 2007.
Despite the fact the UK is still an EU member, Theresa May has agreed to stay away, to give the other 27 leaders the opportunity to discuss the future of Europe without her. But for observers of European politics who look beyond Brexit, there is likely to be another more significant absentee: Liviu Dragnea, the most powerful politician in the summit’s host country.
Continue reading...Thousands of doctors and nurses have left Romania in past decade, leading to dire staff shortages
Gabriela Dumitru was supposed to retire years ago, but instead, she’s working longer hours than ever before. The 65-year-old is one half of a team of two doctors at the neonatology ward in Slobozia, a depressed town about two hours’ drive from Romania’s capital, Bucharest.
Dumitru works three or four 24-hour shifts a week, catching an hour of sleep where possible on a sofa in a small box room decorated with pictures of kittens. Her colleague is 75, and he officially retired 15 years ago. Between them, they do the work of four or five doctors, delivering approximately 1,200 babies a year and caring for those born with difficulties or disabilities.
Continue reading...