Romania

BUCHAREST, Romania -- As Pope John Paul II prayed at an open-air Orthodox Mass yesterday at the side of Patriarch Teoctist, Cristian Andrei, 40, examined the historic moment from mammon's perspective."

TICHILESTI, Romania -- No signpost marks the narrow side road off the Black Sea coastal highway. The tiny commune doesn't even appear on official Romanian maps. Centuries seem to roll away as the 2-mile dirt track leads toward whitewashed huts and stone cottages at the head of a steep valley.Tawny, gnarled figures crouch to toast their corn bread supper over an open fire beneath an ancient willow.Some have cauliflower ears. Many are missing noses, or have only moist lesions where their eyes once were.

SLOBOZIA, Romania -- The King of Kitsch leans on a balcony railing of one of his hotels here and surveys the theme park below him -- 200 acres of what one observer calls a "pop cultural nightmare.""It took us one year to build that steel tower," says the P. T. Barnum of the Balkans. The 160-foot Junior Eiffel Tower is a strange sight in this remote and low-lying farmland, 75 miles east of Bucharest.Ilie Alexandru is a 46-year-old Romanian who made a fantasy come true, had it taken away from him, and now, after a prison sojourn, is back in business.

TARGU JIU, Romania -- When Constantin Brancusi departed this city after completing a sculptural ensemble, he announced, rather prophetically, "You don't know what I'm leaving here."True enough. For more than 60 years four works by the father of contemporary sculpture have stood here, and Romania truly didn't know what her native son had left behind, nor how to take care of the sculptures, nor how to let others know they existed.Quietly, the pieces weathered the decades until one recent day someone noticed they were falling apart and that Brancusi deserved better, as did Romania.

WASHINGTON -- As part of the campaign against President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, the Clinton administration and NATO have tried to cut off his oil supply and bank accounts.It is a campaign that has not gone well, U.S. and NATO officials say. Barges filled with oil in Ukrainian ports cross the Black Sea and chug up the Danube River through Bulgaria and Romania. To pay for it, Milosevic is using money secreted in banks in Cyprus during earlier sanctions against Yugoslavia, the officials said.

PIANU DE JOS, Romania -- Holding a 7-iron on a pretty hilltop in a remote part of Transylvania, Paul Tomita takes a couple of easy practice swings.Eighty yards away stands a rippling flag. Fifty yards away stand some grazing sheep. "They're here to cut the grass," explains Tomita. "And to provide the fertilizer."Golf in Romania may sound a bit like polo in Rwanda. Even Tomita, a stout 84-year-old Romanian, with a white mustache and a black pipe stuck in his mouth, acknowledges the incongruity.

CONCERN about journalism's credibility and hence future is growing. While the worries are legitimate, their current focus may not be hitting the mark.One source of anxiety has been the recent slew of lapses in ethics or judgment: A reporter's questionable acquisition of information, a columnist's over-inventiveness, a network's careless handling of a controversial story, a magazine writer's fictional accounts passed off as news.Quick actionAs damaging as these incidents may appear to be, they drew attention precisely because they are so unusual.

Results: Romania 2, England 1; Colombia 1, Tunisia 0Star of the day: Tunisia goalkeeper Chokri El Ouaer made 11 saves, several of them spectacular, and cleared a few more errant balls in the 1-0 loss to Colombia.Footnote: Michael Owen became the youngest player to score a World Cup goal for England. The 18-year-old tied the game with Romania in the 83rd minute, but the Romanians won it seven minutes later.Homeward-bound: South Africa midfielders Brendan Augustine and Naughty Mokoena were sent home by the team as punishment for staying out partying until dawn Sunday.

BUCHAREST, Romania -- Romania is planning a yard sale. Up for grabs are busts of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, the Communist dictator and his wife who ran the country for more than three decades; fine porcelain and cheap crockery; handbags and briefcases."

BOTOSANI, Romania -- Mitica Gavriliuc sinks into his leather armchair, checks the gold antique pocket watch he picked up on a recent vacation in London, and fires up a well-earned Marlboro. "I'll give you half an hour," he purrs, exhaling contentedly. "I'm feeling generous this evening."And so he should be. Thanks to him, the town of Botosani -- a standard Romanian provincial sprawl of crumbling high-rises and decrepit heavy industry -- now has a private medical clinic, staffed by specialist doctors moonlighting from the municipal hospital.

NICOLAE PLESITA, 80 Sheltered Carlos the Jackal Gen. Nicolae Plesita, a die-hard Communist and chief of the Securitate secret police who arranged shelter in Romania for terrorist Carlos the Jackal and was tried for the bombing of Radio Free Europe, died Monday in Bucharest in a Romanian Intelligence Service hospital, where he was being treated for illnesses including diabetes, the Agerpres and Mediafax news agencies reported, citing family members....

Halloween is creeping closer, and it won't be long before little ghosts and goblins hit the streets in search of sweet treats. But for a more historical All Hallow's Eve this year, skip the candy trail and head straight to the home of Dracula himself: Romania. Despite being the birthplace of the spooky figure, Romania is one of Europe's most beautiful countries, with charming villages and rich Carpathian mountain scenery. Here are five things to do: 1 Explore Bran Castle : Don't let the name fool you: This is indeed Dracula's castle.

BUCHAREST, Romania -- NATO is unlikely to immediately put Ukraine and Georgia on a course toward membership, the group's spokesman said last night, dealing a setback to President Bush, who has pushed hard to expand the 26-nation alliance to include the two countries on Russia's southern flank that had been part of the Soviet Union. However, NATO and Bush administration officials presented the question of taking the first steps that could lead to the two countries joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a matter not of whether, but when, as the alliance began a summit amid controversies that go to the heart of its changing makeup and mission as it nears its seventh decade.

BUCHAREST, Romania -- President Bush declared yesterday that he would not trade away his support for bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO in exchange for Russia dropping its opposition to a U.S. missile defense network in Central Europe. "There's no tradeoffs, period," Bush said, stating that it was a "misperception" that he was willing to make such a bargain. The president said after meeting with Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko in Kiev that he told Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in a recent telephone call that Moscow had "nothing to fear" if the alliance eventually extends a welcome to the two countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.

Sheilah Kast lived in Romania for a few years while her husband, Jim Rosapepe, served as U.S. ambassador there. He's now a state senator and the couple live in College Park, which seems a long way from the Balkans. But Kast finds the town just as interesting. "Some folks are oriented toward the university, but there's a nice range of people. And it's not snooty, and it's diverse and low key." Kast, 58, the host of WYPR's Maryland Morning, has also done television, but likes radio better.

A 712-foot ship loaded with coal that ran aground in the Chesapeake Bay was freed yesterday morning, a week after it became stuck off the coast of Tilghman Island. Workers tried for nearly three days to unload a portion of the 74,000 tons of coal aboard the carrier before finishing the job late Tuesday night. It took another eight hours to remove the ship's ballast water. Once its load was lightened, four tugboats wrested the MV Montrose off the shoal. The ship, which was bound for Romania, is now anchored at Solomons Island, where the Coast Guard is inspecting it. Divers will also examine the ship's bottom to make sure it isn't damaged, Coast Guard Petty Officer Christopher Evanson said.

David Gemmell, 57, a fantasy author known for his adventure tales revolving around heroism and leadership, died in London Friday two weeks after quadruple heart bypass surgery. Born in West London in 1948, he was expelled from school for gambling in 1965 and worked as a laborer, driver's assistant and nightclub bouncer before becoming a journalist. He became a full-time writer after being fired for using his colleagues as characters, according to the Web site of his publisher, Transworld Publishers.

Cecily Brownstone, 96, who wrote cookbooks and twice-a-week feature articles on food for the Associated Press for 39 years, died of pneumonia Tuesday in a New York City hospital. She devoted most of her life to writing about food, becoming a leading figure in New York's circle of cookbook authors and restaurant critics, and one of the nation's most widely published food writers. From 1947 until she retired in 1986, she churned out two columns on cuisine and five recipes a week for AP, an estimated 14,200 articles.

ATHENS - With a trick one could describe as a Double Houdini with a twist, Hiroyuki Tomita executed a last-minute escape from gravity - as well as the pressure of the charging Americans - to secure the Olympic men's gymnastics team gold medal for Japan last night. Tomita was the evening's final performer and offered the appropriate exclamation point on the wild finish. His twisting, tumbling release-and-catch move on the high bar at last settled both an intense physical contest and a mathematics test.

WAYNESVILLE, N.C. - The real Cold Mountain rises 6,030 feet above sea level here in western North Carolina, a rugged peak clad in mountain laurel and huckleberries and, in winter, towering, leafless trees. Its Hollywood double is in Romania. The movie Cold Mountain opens nationwide today amid critical acclaim and high hopes from a studio that gambled more than $80 million on the production. Set mainly in the Blue Ridge Mountains of the 1860s but filmed in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, Cold Mountain recounts the pilgrimage of a wounded Confederate deserter who slogs across North Carolina toward the promise of a lover waiting in the hills.