It’s perfectly fine to use cyanide to mine gold in Romania, just as long as you don’t do it anywhere near Rosia Montana: “Rosia Montana village has been designated a place of historic site of national interest which has a radius of two kilometres [just over a mile],” said Adrian Balteanu, the Romanian culture ministry’s adviser on cultural heritage. “At such a site, all mining … Continue reading Rosia Montana Stymied Yet Again
At long last, the worthless AP bureau in Bucharest began paying attention to the protests that have been rocking Chisinau (the capital of the Republic of Moldova) for days: The protest came amid a standoff between President Nicolae Timofti and the pro-European governing coalition. Timofti on Thursday nominated Ion Paduraru, the general secretary of his presidential office, to be prime minister — a day after … Continue reading Media Finally Pays Attention to Moldova
Is illegal logging a huge problem in Romania? Why, yes it really is, with experts estimating that more than half of all logging in Romania is illegal. So you’d think I’d be quite supportive of this measure: Romania has toughened its legislation in order to protect its natural resources by defining illegal logging – but also any action “which endangers the country’s water, forests and … Continue reading For Once, I Almost Agree With the Romanian Gov’t
Word Count: 2171 Not too long ago, I had the chance to visit the beautiful city of Odessa. When I casually mentioned how weird it was that the train station in Odessa – as well as train stations in Bender and Tiraspol (part of Transnistria, the country that doesn’t exist) has a lot of armed Interior Ministry cops posted there, I started getting comments about … Continue reading Odessa Tales
Word Count: 1810 It’s been an interesting week in Romania. What started out as a one-note story, that 27 people died in a fire at a club/disco soon morphed into wide-scale protests, and the “sudden” resignation of the Prime Minister (and a few other minor hacks). The Western media has been scrambling to knit these facts into a cohesive story, all without success. For low-attention-span … Continue reading Blowing Smoke
All Things Romania 