Al Jazeera: Influencer Andrew Tate detained amid human trafficking probe. “Andrew Tate, a controversial British-American kickboxer-turned-internet personality, and his brother have been detained in Romania as part of an investigation into alleged human trafficking.”
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Romania’s ornate and sometimes crumbling synagogues get new access via virtual tours. “Launched by Romanian NGO Pantograf in collaboration with Jewish local communities and activists, the website Povestile Sinagogilor, or Stories of the Synagogues, invites visitors to a virtual tour of eight historic sites in Romania, including Timisoara’s main synagogue, which has been recently renovated.”
Romania Insider: The National Archives will fully digitize its collection of photographs depicting Communist Romania. “Thousands of photographs of Communist Romania and of Romania as a Constitutional Monarchy between 1921-1947, managed by The National Archives are going to be scanned and digitized. The Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism and the Memory of the Romanian Exile will collaborate with the National Archives of Romania on this project.”
Business Review (Romania): Stickr, a new social media app born in Romania, ready to scale up “Stickr, an app developed in Romania, is a new social media platform with a unique code that only allows users to post owned content, automatically certifying the location and timing of the photos or videos posted by using satellite geolocation and placing all posts on a 3D map of the world.”
Motherboard: The Alleged Scammers Behind the Most Notorious Murder-for-Hire Site Have Been Arrested . “Police in Romania have arrested the alleged operators of a scam dark web murder-for-hire site where an unsettling number of people on the ‘kill list’ have wound up dead.”
British Library Endangered Archives Blog: New online – December 2021. “This month’s round-up of newly available collections features archives from India, Romania, Moldova, and Indonesia.”
Radio Free Europe: Absolute Power: The Astonishing Personal Photos Of Nicolae Ceausescu. “A family photo archive reveals life behind the public facade of Romania’s notorious communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. These images are some of nearly 6,000 photos released online in a photo archive created by Romania’s National Archives and the country’s Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism.” Some of the images even in the article are disturbing, featuring hazing-type violence and dead animals festooned with props like a hat and sunglasses.
Calvert Journal: On the ball: the polka dot toy that entertained a nation. “Instagram and Facebook account @mingearosie explores Romania’s recent past via the photographs of one ubiquitous toy: a red ball with white polka dots.”
Sky News: COVID-19: 10 patients killed in fire on coronavirus intensive care ward in Romania. “Ten people have died after a fire broke out on an intensive care ward treating coronavirus patients in Romania. Seven others are critically injured following the fire at Piatra Neamt county hospital on Saturday. Apart from one person, all those killed or injured are COVID-19 patients, according to emergency services spokesperson Irina Popa.”
The Calvert Journal: A digital photo archive shows everyday life in 20th-century Romania. “A curatorial collective has started to digitise one of Romania’s few historical photographic archives. The collection belongs to Mihai Oroveanu (1946-2013), an art historian and photographer who worked as the director of Romania’s National Museum of Contemporary Art between 2001-2013.”
NBC News: Romanian villagers re-elect mayor who died from Covid-19. “Romanian villagers have re-elected their mayor by a landslide even though he died two weeks ago from Covid-19 complications, saying he had done a good job and deserved his posthumous victory. A video shared on social media showed dozens of villagers visiting the grave of Ion Aliman, a Social Democrat, to light candles after voting had ended in Sunday’s local elections.”
Balkan Insight: Journalism, Activism Combine to Preserve Riches of Ancient Romanian Port. “In early July, when a court in Romania declared null and void the 2003 sale of a century-old palace on the country’s Black Sea coast, it marked a milestone in a journalistic fight to preserve the rich cultural heritage of the port of Constanta. Built in the early 1920s at the behest of Queen Mary of Romania, the Royal Palace of Mamaia became a nightclub and eventually a depository for mouldy mattresses after the state sold it to a local businessman 17 years ago. But the battle to save it from ruin began only in 2014, with the investigative reporting and public campaigning of Info Sud-Est, an online publication on Constanta affairs with a rare focus on the preservation of the city’s cultural heritage.”
BalkanInsight: Online Photo Archive Brings Romania’s History Back to Life. “If we take the 20th century, we can find a significant amount of digitized content that reflects that part of our history. But most of it comes from public institutions, newspapers, magazines and other organized archives. It scarcely represents people’s life in that time. This void in the graphic collective memory of most countries, which is perhaps most significant in post-communist societies, where archival sources were even more centralized, is being filled in Romania by Azopan. An amateur free online archive, it digitizes and publishes analogue pictures donated by the public.”
Calvert Journal: A digital archive is recovering half a century of communist Romania’s eclectic visual culture. “Romanian culture zine Kajet Journal has launched a digital archive of the country’s communist-era print culture, marking 30 years since the December 1989 Revolution that toppled the country’s socialist regime. The research project makes hundreds of scans from books, booklets, DIY manuals, newspapers, and periodicals, produced between 1947 and 1989, available to the general public.”
European Interest: Votul Meu: A new tool lunched in Romania. “The Center for the Study of Democracy in Romania has launched the independent vote matching tool, Votul Meu, ahead of the European elections. The interactive tool aims to match political preferences between parties and potential voters for the European elections, based on political parties’ campaign messages.”
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