Romania: Cut Off Villages Supplied With Emergency Food By Military Planes And Police Helicopters – People Have To Cut Tunnels Through 15 Feet (4 Meters) Of Snow To Get Out Of Their Homes

Emergency food flown into stranded European towns (Idaho Statesman, Feb. 13, 2012):

BUCHAREST, Romania — Military planes and police helicopters flew in tons of emergency food to snowbound villages and ships in the Balkans on Monday, after blizzards so fierce that some people had to cut tunnels through 15 feet (4 meters) of snow to get out of their homes.Since the end of January, Eastern Europe has been pummeled by a record-breaking cold snap and the heaviest snowfall in recent memory. Hundreds of people, many of them homeless, have died in the bitter cold and tens of thousands have been trapped by blocked roads inside homes with little heat.

Authorities declared a state of emergency Monday in eastern Romania, where 6,000 people have been cut off for days. About a dozen major roads were closed, 300 trains canceled and more than 1,000 schools shut down.

Read moreRomania: Cut Off Villages Supplied With Emergency Food By Military Planes And Police Helicopters – People Have To Cut Tunnels Through 15 Feet (4 Meters) Of Snow To Get Out Of Their Homes

Europe: Big Freeze Death Toll Rises Past 550 – Tens Of Thousands Of People Cut Off – State of Emergency Declared In Montenegro After Blizard Dumps Another 2 Meters of Snow In 24H

Death toll rises as big cold freezes Europe (DPA/Sydney Morning Herald – ?Feb 11, 2012?):

Freezing temperatures left thousands of people stranded without power in the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe on Saturday, as the death toll from one of the coldest winters in years continued to rise.

In Montenegro, the government declared a state of emergency 24 hours into a blizzard that dumped another two metres of snow across the country and cut off access to northern regions. The death toll was expected to rise from three when rescuers reach isolated areas.

In Serbia, the authorities reported three new deaths, raising the overall death toll for the country to 19. An estimated 50,000 people remain isolated in remote villages. The energy situation has become critical, prompting the government to extend a two-day holiday next week to five days, keeping schools closed and cut the power supply to non-essential factories.

In Croatia, an average of 50 centimetres of snow were expected to fall during the weekend, while powerful winds blowing from the sea forced local road authorities to close some sections of the Adriatic highway.

Many villages in mountainous regions in Bosnia have been cut off since the start of the cold spell, nearly two weeks ago.

Temperatures dropped to as low as -32C in Poland’s southern Bieszczady Mountains, while eight people died in house fires, police said.

A further eight people died in Romania, the health ministry said, raising the overall death toll to 65. Tens of thousands of people remained isolated in the south, where the army, police and firefighters were trying to clear access routes and distribute food and water.

Heavy snowfall also hit many parts of Italy – especially its central and southern regions – where six recent deaths have been linked to the cold weather. Several remote villages in the central Marche and Umbria regions remained cut off as a result of unusually high snow levels.

In north-eastern Trieste, at least 10 people were injured when winds with speeds of more than 130 km/h lashed the Adriatic port city. The poor weather forced the cancellation of flights and Serie A football matches.

In northern Bulgaria, trains could not make their way through the deep snow, which the wind has blown on the railways, state radio reported.

The Bulgarian section of the Danube was completely frozen on Saturday, the national Agency for Maintenance of the Danube River said. The Bulgarian Maritime Administration has banned all navigation in the Bulgaria section, including ferries to Romania.

europe snow blocks in tens of thousands (AFP/Pakistan Daily Times – ?Feb 11, 2012?):

* Death toll from Europe’s big freeze rises past 550

BELGRADE: Snow drifts reaching up to rooftops kept tens of thousands of villagers prisoners in their own homes Saturday as the death toll from Europe’s big freeze rose past 550.

Read moreEurope: Big Freeze Death Toll Rises Past 550 – Tens Of Thousands Of People Cut Off – State of Emergency Declared In Montenegro After Blizard Dumps Another 2 Meters of Snow In 24H

MUST-SEE: Romania: Villages Buried Under 13-16 Feet (4-5 Meters) of Snow (Video)


YouTube Added: 10.02.2012

Description:

Villages buried under 4-5 Meters (13-16 feet) of snow. January-February 2012.

Sources:

http://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/actualitate/romania-sub-zapada-30-de-batrani-izo…

http://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/actualitate/imagini-incredibile-din-case-ingropa…

Deadly Big Freeze Across Europe – Italy: 160,000 Households Without Electricity; Snow Falls On Rome’s Colosseum For The First Time In Three Decades (Video)


YouTube

Deadly freeze moves west across Europe (Al Jazeera, Feb. 5, 2012)

More than 250 people have been killed across Europe as a potentially worsening week-long cold snap shifts west, blanketing large parts of the continent with snow.

Forecasters on Sunday predicted the deep freeze, which has already forced Bosnia to declare a state of emergency and airports to close, will continue.

The death toll included hundreds of homeless people who have frozen to death in what has become the harshest European winter in decades.

Russian gas exporter Gazprom, which supplies fuel to much of Europe, said it would be unable to meet increased European demands and had reduced supplies “for a few days” to ease the crisis in Russia.

Snow fell on Rome’s Colosseum for the first time in three decades, disrupting air and rail travel, and Venice’s famous canals have frozen over.

About 160,000 people in central and southern Italy were without electricity, and power company Enel said 1,000 workers were trying to fix damaged power lines.

Bodies on the streets

In Ukraine, where at least 122 people have died, the most in Europe, 78 bodies have been found on the streets. Night- time temperatures there have dropped to -33C.

Metro stations in the capital, Kiev, have become sanctuaries of warmth for the homeless.

Read moreDeadly Big Freeze Across Europe – Italy: 160,000 Households Without Electricity; Snow Falls On Rome’s Colosseum For The First Time In Three Decades (Video)

First EU Country Stops To Pay Benefits To Anyone Who Owns PRECIOUS METALS!

Romanians stop paying benefits to anyone who owns gold jewellery (Daily Mail, Feb. 2, 2012):

Romanian officials have denied targeting gypsies under tough new laws introduced to cut back on the amount of benefits paid – by refusing to pay benefits to anyone who owns gold jewellery.

Under the regulations introduced by the Department for Work and Pensions, any person claiming any sort of social benefit will be excluded if they declare that they own jewellery, or have more than 100 grams of precious metal, works of art, porcelain or crystal objects, fur coats or designer products.

Read moreFirst EU Country Stops To Pay Benefits To Anyone Who Owns PRECIOUS METALS!

163 Dead As Cold Snap Grips Europe

163 dead as cold snap grips Europe (AFP, Feb. 2, 2012):

WARSAW — A cold snap kept Europe in its icy grip Thursday, pushing the death toll to 163 as countries from Ukraine to Italy struggled with temperatures that plunged to record lows in some places.

Entire villages were cut off in parts of eastern Europe, trapping thousands, while road, air and rail links were severed and gas consumption shot up during what has been the severest winter in decades in some regions.

In Ukraine, tens of thousands headed to shelters to escape the freeze that emergencies services said has killed 63 people — most of them frozen to death in the streets, some succumbing to the hypothermia later in hospitals.

Read more163 Dead As Cold Snap Grips Europe

Snow Chaos In ROMANIA: Army Called In To Save Trapped Travellers, -20C Expected

Romania uses army to save snow-trapped travellers (Reuters, Jan. 26, 2012):

* Temperatures expected to fall to -20C on Friday* PM says priority is to rescue stranded car travellers

* Blizzards also shut towns and port in Bulgaria (Updates rescue numbers, adds protests)

BUCHAREST — Romania has drafted in the army to rescue hundreds of travellers stranded by blizzards that dumped metres of snow on the ground on Thursday, derailing a train and forcing authorities to shut down motorways and ports and cancel flights.

Hundreds of schools were shut and by 2000 GMT dozens of towns and villages were still without electricity, as felled trees and strong winds brought down power lines.

Police and ambulance crews had rescued more than 1,600 people by Thursday evening but more than 1,000 cars were still snowed in on roads, Prime Minister Emil Boc said, and road authority officials were distributing tea and blankets.

Authorities have banned traffic on Romania’s only two motorways and several national roads until weather improved.

“I am asking you to not rest easy until you have made sure people’s lives are not in danger,” Prime Minister Boc told an emergency response meeting late on Thursday before heading out to capital Bucharest’s ringroad to inspect progress.

Read moreSnow Chaos In ROMANIA: Army Called In To Save Trapped Travellers, -20C Expected

Romanian-Bulgarian Border Closed Due To Heavy Snow

Romanian-Bulgarian border closed due to heavy snow (Romania Business Insider, Jan. 26, 2012):

The border between Romania and Bulgaria was closed due to the bad weather conditions, according to the Bulgarian Regional Development Minister Lilyana Pavlova, quoted by Novinite.com.

The Giugiu-Bucharest border crossing is closed for all vehicles due to the heavy snow. All transit traffic from Greece and Turkey via Bulgaria to Romania has also been stopped, Lilyana Pavlova added.

Read moreRomanian-Bulgarian Border Closed Due To Heavy Snow

Inside Romania’s Secret CIA Prison

Inside Romania’s secret CIA prison (AP, Dec. 8, 2011):

WASHINGTON — In northern Bucharest, in a busy residential neighborhood minutes from the heart of the capital city, is a secret the Romanian government has long tried to protect.

For years, the CIA used a government building — codenamed “Bright Light” — as a makeshift prison for its most valuable detainees. There it held al-Qaida operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and others in a basement prison before they were ultimately transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006, according to former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the location and inner workings of the prison.

The existence of a CIA prison in Romania has been widely reported, but its location has never been made public. The Associated Press and German public television ARD located the former prison and learned details of the facility where harsh interrogation tactics were used. ARD’s program on the CIA prison is set to air Thursday.

Crucified nun dies in exorcism

“God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil,” AFP quoted the priest as saying.

“I don’t understand why journalists are making such a fuss about this. Exorcism is a common practice in the heart of the Romanian Orthodox church and my methods are not at all unknown to other priests,” Father Daniel added.


father-daniel Father Daniel says the nun’s death was justified

A Romanian nun has died after being bound to a cross, gagged and left alone for three days in a cold room in a convent, Romanian police have said.

Members of the convent in north-east Romania claim Maricica Irina Cornici was possessed and that the crucifixion had been part of an exorcism ritual.

Cornici was found dead on the cross on Wednesday after fellow nuns called an ambulance, according to police.

A priest and four nuns were charged with imprisonment leading to death.

Orphan

Police say the 23-year-old nun, who was denied food and drink throughout her ordeal, had been tied and chained to the cross and a towel pushed into her mouth to smother any sounds.

A post-mortem is to be carried out, although initial reports say that Cornici died from asphyxiation.

I don’t understand why journalists are making such a fuss about this
Father Daniel

Read moreCrucified nun dies in exorcism

Panic Strikes East Europe Borrowers as Banks Cut Franc Loans


The Hungarian National Bank stands in Budapest, Hungary, on Oct. 16, 2008. Photographer: Balint Porneczi/Bloomberg News

Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) — Imre Apostagi says the hospital upgrade he’s overseeing has stalled because his employer in Budapest can’t get a foreign-currency loan.

The company borrows in foreign currencies to avoid domestic interest rates as much as double those linked to dollars, euros and Swiss francs. Now banks are curtailing the loans as investors pull money out of eastern Europe’s developing markets and local currencies plunge.

“There’s no money out there,” said Apostagi, a project manager who asked that the medical-equipment seller he works for not be identified to avoid alarming international backers. “We won’t collapse, but everything’s slowing to a crawl. The whole world is scared and everyone’s going a bit mad.”

Foreign-denominated loans helped fuel eastern European economies including Poland, Romania and Ukraine, funding home purchases and entrepreneurship after the region emerged from communism. The elimination of such lending is magnifying the global credit crunch and threatening to stall the expansion of some of Europe’s fastest-growing economies.

Read morePanic Strikes East Europe Borrowers as Banks Cut Franc Loans

IMF may need to “print money” as crisis spreads

The International Monetary Fund may soon lack the money to bail out an ever growing list of countries crumbling across Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia, raising concerns that it will have to tap taxpayers in Western countries for a capital infusion or resort to the nuclear option of printing its own money.

IMF's work in countries such as Turkey is only just beginning
IMF’s work in countries such as Turkey is only just beginning

The Fund is already close to committing a quarter of its $200bn (£130bn) reserve chest, with a loans to Iceland ($2bn), Ukraine ($16.5bn), and talks underway with Pakistan ($14.5bn), Hungary ($10bn), as well as Belarus and Serbia.

Neil Schering, emerging market strategist at Capital Economics, said the IMF’s work in the great arc of countries from the Baltic states to Turkey is only just beginning.

“When you tot up the countries across the region with external funding needs, you get to $500bn or $600bn very quickly, and that blows the IMF out of the water. The Fund may soon have to start calling on the West for additional funds,” he said.

Brad Setser, an expert on capital flows at the Council for Foreign Relations, said Russia, Mexico, Brazil and India have together spent $75bn of their reserves defending their currencies this month, and South Korea is grappling with a serious banking crisis.

“Right now the IMF is too small to meet the foreign currency liquidity needs of the larger emerging economies. We’re in a dangerous situation and there is the risk of extreme moves in the markets, as we have seen with the Brazilian real. I hope policy-makers understand how serious this is,” he said.

The IMF, led by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has the power to raise money on the capital markets by issuing `AAA’ bonds under its own name. It has never resorted to this option, preferring to tap members states for deposits.

The nuclear option is to print money by issuing Special Drawing Rights, in effect acting as if it were the world’s central bank. This was done briefly after the fall of the Soviet Union but has never been used as systematic tool of policy to head off a global financial crisis.

“The IMF can in theory create liquidity like a central bank,” said an informed source. “There are a lot of ideas kicking around.”

Read moreIMF may need to “print money” as crisis spreads

Europe on the brink of currency crisis meltdown

The crisis in Hungary recalls the heady days of the UK’s expulsion from the ERM.

The financial crisis spreading like wildfire across the former Soviet bloc threatens to set off a second and more dangerous banking crisis in Western Europe, tipping the whole Continent into a fully-fledged economic slump.

Currency pegs are being tested to destruction on the fringes of Europe’s monetary union in a traumatic upheaval that recalls the collapse of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.

“This is the biggest currency crisis the world has ever seen,” said Neil Mellor, a strategist at Bank of New York Mellon.

Experts fear the mayhem may soon trigger a chain reaction within the eurozone itself. The risk is a surge in capital flight from Austria – the country, as it happens, that set off the global banking collapse of May 1931 when Credit-Anstalt went down – and from a string of Club Med countries that rely on foreign funding to cover huge current account deficits.

The latest data from the Bank for International Settlements shows that Western European banks hold almost all the exposure to the emerging market bubble, now busting with spectacular effect.

They account for three-quarters of the total $4.7 trillion £2.96 trillion) in cross-border bank loans to Eastern Europe, Latin America and emerging Asia extended during the global credit boom – a sum that vastly exceeds the scale of both the US sub-prime and Alt-A debacles.

Read moreEurope on the brink of currency crisis meltdown

Russian default risk tops Iceland as crisis deepens

Russia’s financial crisis is escalating with lightning speed as foreigners pull funds from the country and the debt markets start to price a serious risk of sovereign default.


S&P has cut its outlook for Russia, which has been propping up the rouble: a man on a phone passes a board displaying currency exchange rates in Moscow Photo: Reuters

Russia’s financial crisis is escalating with lightning speed as foreigners pull funds from the country and the debt markets start to price a serious risk of sovereign default.

The cost of insuring Russian bonds against bankruptcy rocketed to extreme levels yesterday. Spreads on credit default swaps (CDS) reached 1,123, higher than Iceland’s debt before it sought a rescue from the International Monetary Fund.

Moves by Hungary, Ukraine and Belarus to seek emergency loans from the IMF have now set off a dangerous chain reaction across Eastern Europe.

Romania had to raise overnight interest rates to 900pc on Wednesday to stem capital flight, recalling the wild episodes of Europe’s ERM crisis in 1992. The CDS spreads on Ukraine’s debt have topped 2,800, signalling total revulsion by investors.

Rating agency Standard & Poor’s issued a downgrade alert on Russian bonds yesterday, warning that a series of state rescue packages worth $200bn (£124bn) could start to erode the credit-worthiness of the state.

Read moreRussian default risk tops Iceland as crisis deepens

Crisis spreads to Eastern Europe as Ukraine, Hungary and Serbia call IMF

Ukraine, Hungary, and Serbia are all in emergency talks with the International Monetary Fund, raising fears that an exodus of foreign investors will set off a systemic crisis across Eastern Europe.

A team of IMF trouble-shooters rushed to Kiev on Wednesay to draw up a possible standby loan to help Ukraine stabilize its bank after a panic run on deposits this month.

Read moreCrisis spreads to Eastern Europe as Ukraine, Hungary and Serbia call IMF

Russia, Indonesia, Ukraine Shut Exchanges as Stock Rout Worsens

Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) — Russia, Indonesia, Ukraine and Romania shut their stock exchanges after shares plummeted in the worst week for emerging-markets in at least two decades.

Russia’s Micex Index dropped 14 percent, having already slumped 20 percent this week, before trading stopped at 11:05 a.m. in Moscow. The exchange won’t reopen until Oct. 10 unless the Federal Financial Markets Service says otherwise, Micex spokesman Alexei Gerasyuk said by phone. The Jakarta Composite index fell 21 percent in its biggest weekly slump in at least 25 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Investors are fleeing on concern the worsening global credit crisis will cause more banks to collapse and push the global economy into recession, lowering the price of the commodities that drive developing nation economies. The benchmark MSCI Emerging Markets index is headed for its worst weekly decline since it was established in 1987 after falling 21 percent.

Read moreRussia, Indonesia, Ukraine Shut Exchanges as Stock Rout Worsens