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Protesters focused much of their anger on Mr. Basescu, a former ship captain whose leadership style has been widely criticized as increasingly authoritarian. They cited cuts to government salaries, frozen pensions and an increase in the value-added tax, as well as what they said was deep-seated corruption and a broader sense that the government served only its own interests and those of its richest constituents.
Many of the same broad themes have been voiced by demonstrators in countries as diverse as Israel and India, from the “indignados,” or outraged, in Spain to the Occupy Wall Street protests that started in New York and spread around the world.
In Romania, news media reported that the unrest had spread over the past week to about 60 cities nationwide. About 7,000 people turned up at a rally in Bucharest on Thursday organized by the opposition National Liberal Party, according to the Ministry of the Interior, and the crowd in the downtown square later was said to number about 1,500.
Romania had to turn to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Union in 2009 for 20 billion euros in emergency loans (about $27 billion at the exchange rates then). In response the government took tough steps to rein in the budget deficit, which was 7.3 percent of gross domestic product that year. Without the spending cuts and tax increases, that could have risen to 13.7 percent in 2010, according to Andreea Paul, an economic adviser to Mr. Boc. Instead the deficit was cut to 6.9 percent in 2010 and an estimated 4.2 percent in 2011, and the economy began to grow again.
“It was not easy at all, politically speaking, but these are times when political leaders separate themselves from demagogic politicians,” said Ms. Paul, who placed blame for the protests on opposition parties trying to drum up discontent in an election year.
Mr. Ceausescu and his wife were executed on Dec. 25, 1989. Since then, Romania has made significant strides, joining the European Union and NATO. But the recession in the wake of the global financial crisis struck the country of 22 million particularly hard. And even as the economy has recovered here, some Romanians who used to work in other European Union countries whose economies have slowed, particularly Spain and Italy, have been forced to come home, making the search for jobs even harder for the long-term unemployed.
Alexandru Dragan, 46, an electro-technician, said he had been unemployed since 2009 despite having a lengthy résumé and work experience in Germany.
Matthew Cowles, a character actor best known for his role as Billy Clyde Tuggle on the soap opera “All My Children,” died of congestive heart failure in New York City on May 22. He was 69.
Cowles was married to “The Good Wife’s” Christine Baranski.
Cowles made a career of playing villains who come to a bad end. He often joked that he “made a living dying.” He will be best remembered for his portrayal of Tuggle, the pimp who terrorized the town of Pine Valley on ABC’s “All My Children.” His work on the soap opera spanned four decades, as his role recurred throughout the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and again in 2013, when the show was temporarily resurrected. The role garnered Cowles a daytime Emmy nomination.
Cowles also had an extensive stage career. He made his Broadway debut in 1966, starring in the world premier of Edward Albee’s “Malcolm.” In 1968 he played alongside Al Pacino in Israel Horovitz’s “The Indian Wants the Bronx.” Cowles also co-starred with Christopher Walken in “Kid Champion” and “Sweet Bird of Youth,” both in 1975. He made his last New York stage appearance in 2012 in “Taming of the Shrew” at the Theatre for a New Audience.
In addition, Cowles wrote three plays: “Mexican Standoff at Fat Squaw Springs,” “Our Daily Bread” and “Noblesse Oblige.” He also wrote a series of short stories and songs recounting his 50 years as an avid motorcyclist.
Born in New York City, Cowles was the son of Broadway producer Chandler Cowles and studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
When he married Baranski, he drove her away from the country church where they wed on a black BMW motorcycle named Lucifer. They met doing Ibsen’s “Ghosts” in 1981 and worked together again in “Hedda Gabler” (1987).
In addition to Baranski, to whom he was married for 30 years, Cowles is survived by two daughters, Isabel Murphy and Lily Cowles, and by a grandson, Max Francis Murphy.
ST. PETERSBURG - Gloria McNeal was there when two teens crashed into the tree in front of her relative's home.
"I do believe this tree saved that car from coming into my grandmother's property," McNeal said. "And she just came home from rehab with a stroke so she couldn't move if she had to move."
The tree stopped the two teens in a stolen Chevy Camaro out for a joyride late Sunday evening putting them both in the hospital with serious injuries. Police say the 15-year-old passenger has life threatening injuries.
"I think that some of the parents need to get a grip on supporting these children because there's no way that your 14, 15-year-old child comes home with a car, and you know it's not their car but you allow them to leave with the car," said McNeal.
St. Pete's Police Chief says the problem is state wide.
"It's only a matter of time before an innocent person is struck by one of these cars," said St. Pete Police Chief Anthony Holloway.
Youngsters are stealing cars just for fun.
"These kids at a young age are finding out that people are either leaving their keys in their cars or leaving their cars running and it's a game," said Chief Holloway.
Every week in St. Pete on average around 12 cars are stolen. 60 percent of those are unlocked, have keys inside or the engines are still on.
Even though St. Pete Police publishes weekly info on social media, it's still a shock how young the suspects can be.
"I didn't know they were actually babies. To me, 14, 15 years old, that's a baby. That's a child," said McNeal.
LOCATED ON THE Shannon Estuary, Beeves Rock Lighthouse has been described as “bizarre” not only for its architecture but for the story of its most famous keeper.
In the early 20th Century the maternal grandfather of former Taoiseach Enda Kenny served as its keeper.
As it was only accessible by boat it made intimacy hard for newly married James McGinley and his wife, Margaret Heekin.
Margaret lived in the Commissioners of Irish Lights’ cottage on the mainland near Askeaton, Co Limerick, while her husband was stationed on the rock.
Daily communication between the couple was only possible via semaphore.
“They would wave flags at each other. It was the early 20th-century version of texting, and that’s how they communicated until he had shore leave, so that was certainly not a romantic start to the marriage,” author and illustrator Roger O’Reilly told TheJournal.ie.
The history of Beeves Rock is highlighted along with 80 other lighthouses in O’Reilly’s new book, Lighthouses of Ireland. The book has been nominated for an Irish Book Award in TheJournal.ie sponsored category Best Irish Published Book of the Year.
The Drogheda artist launched his own illustration business in 2016, designing retro posters of Irish towns in the style of old railway posters.
Over a two-year period, he travelled across the country capturing images of lighthouses for his new book which details the histories of the lighthouses around our shores, estuaries and harbours.
According to O’Reilly, the success of Beeves Rock Lighthouse can be measured by the fact that few vessels have sunk in the stretch of river since it was built.
But one of the few wreckages in the estuary was a Dutch aircraft, carrying diamonds, which crashed with its cargo in 1957.
The lighthouse itself is basically a house with a lighthouse coming up through the roof, said O’Reilly.
Isolation like that experienced by McGinley was common among the keepers of lighthouses in inaccessible places.
In the winter of 1942/43 a winter storm trapped the keepers of Blackrock lighthouse in Co Mayo on the island for 117 days.
“They didn’t have a well, so they would basically take water from the roof,” O’Reilly said.
When there was a lull in the weather in February 1943, John Padden, the contract boatman who had managed to get some rations across to the keepers during the storm, was able to finally relieve them except for one, Jack Scott, who stayed behind to direct operations until conditions returned to normal.
In more recent years the site has come back to prominence after the coast guard helicopter Rescue 116 crashed into Blackrock, tragically killing all four crew members.
In March 2017, Captain Dara Fitzpatrick, Captain Mark Duffy, winchman Ciarán Smith and winch operator Paul Ormsby all lost their lives while providing top cover support on a medical evacuation.
Speaking to TheJournal.ie, O’Reilly said he never had any intention of compiling a comprehensive collection of Ireland’s lighthouses. For him, it started off when it was coming up to Christmas and he wanted to give people an extra gift when they ordered an illustration of his.
O’Reilly designed two mini-posters of lighthouses for customers – Fastnet in Co Cork and the Bailey in Co Dublin – which planted the seed for an idea that would come to fruition in the spring of 2016.
“From that, I guess the thing took legs – before I knew it I was halfway up the east coast and then up around the Mayo area.
“By that stage, I decided there’s no point in stopping, I may as well keep going until I have them all done,” O’Reilly said.
O’Reilly said that because the images are digital, he wanted to keep something of himself in them, so he included his fingerprint in each one.
I scanned my fingerprint and used that as part of the texture within the pictures. That was a way of keeping a personal touch.
Since the final lighthouse was automated in 1997 – the Bailey in Howth – all the work of keeping Ireland’s lighthouses functioning is done remotely.
But despite advancing technology, lighthouses still serve as crucial navigational aids for the maritime traffic around Ireland.
O’Reilly’s book, Lighthouses of Ireland – An Illustrated Guide to the Sentinels that Guard our Coastline – has been nominated for the An Post Irish Book Award in TheJournal.ie sponsored category Best Irish Published Book of the Year.
Email “Enda Kenny's grandfather, a Dutch plane full of diamonds: Illustrating the lesser-known histories of Irish lighthouses”.
Feedback on “Enda Kenny's grandfather, a Dutch plane full of diamonds: Illustrating the lesser-known histories of Irish lighthouses”.
Significant rainfall on Monday was enough to lift an evacuation alert sparked by a wildfire near Waterton Lakes National Park in southwestern Alberta.
Parks Canada spokesman John Stoesser says the area received 32 millimetres of rain, which is sufficient to rescind the alert that was issued last week.
“It absolutely is very nice to hear the sound of raindrops coming down. It helps immensely,” said Stoesser.
The 860-hectare blaze remains entirely on the U.S. side of the border in Glacier National Park, about seven kilometres away. Stoesser said the area isn’t out of the woods yet.
“The fire does remain active. This hasn’t extinguished the fire,” Stoesser said.
Stoesser says despite the evacuation alert, the park’s townsite was still quite busy.
Waterton was devastated by a wildfire last September which consumed more than 190 square kilometres within the park and led to a two-week mandatory evacuation.
Stoesser said that is still fresh in the minds of both park residents and staff.
“The community had a really great event last weekend commemorating the Kenow wildfire from last year,” he said.
The Congress Party on Sunday trained its guns on Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and alleged that he was attempting to polarise the voters ahead of next year’s assembly polls by playing the communal card. Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit also used the occasion to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“The BJP and the SP have been working together to communalize UP polity and UP voters for almost 15 years. Mulayam Singh Yadav wants that if there is a polarized atmosphere, Muslims will vote for him; the BJP thinks that the Hindus will vote for them. Both of them are actually two faces of the same coin,” he told ANI.
The Congress leader further said every community is a part of the nation, adding they don’t just vote because of their community but for what they think is a broader ideological issue as far as whole nation is concerned.
Speaking at a function in Lucknow yesterday to kick-start “Mulayam Sandesh Yatra” at the party headquarters, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said the minorities helped his party come to power after the Babri Masjid was demolished in Ayodhya and claimed the Samajwadi Party will return to power in the state yet again.
The Samajwadi Party boss also attempted to reach out to the Muslim community while exhorting his party leaders to ensure that more members of the community join them.
When President Trump addresses the nation from the Oval Office on Tuesday night he will be sharing the space with more than a teleprompter and an array of TV cameras.
The room with the legendary shape will also be filled with ghosts. The spirit of every president in the television age will be alive in the memories of millions watching at home.
President Harry S. Truman speaks during a television address from the Oval Office in 1947.
To some degree, that is the idea. When you address the nation from the iconic broadcast space all presidents have inhabited since Harry Truman, you amplify the sense of history in the making. You take the mantle, as some might say, of momentous decision-making.
That impression has survived through seven decades of speeches that sometimes soared but just as often clanked. It has survived even though more recent presidents have dialed back on the use of the Oval for TV, preferring the East Room or the grand Cross Hall connecting the East and West Wings.
President George W. Bush addresses the nation from the Oval Office at the White House on Sept. 11, 2001.
Former President George W. Bush used it for major international crises. Barack Obama spoke from the Oval only three times, the last time from a lectern that stood awkwardly in the middle of the room.
President Barack Obama delivers an address to the nation in the Oval Office on Dec. 6, 2015. Obama sought to soothe a nation shaken by a terrorist attack in a California town.
The gravitas of the Oval Office address has also endured the onslaught of successor media, especially the social media platforms that now absorb so much of our national attention.
It is rather surprising that a president so famously proud of his millions of Twitter followers would care about a 20th century tool such as this.
Yet the special notion that the entire nation is gathered at the same moment staring at the same image still carries a unique charge. It is hard to imagine Twitter, even Trump Twitter, packing quite the same wallop.
And no one can doubt, at this moment, the president's need for a game-changing moment regarding the unbuilt wall on the Mexico border and the partially shuttered government.
Harry Truman inaugurated the practice of talking to TV America from the White House in 1947, when few Americans even owned a TV. He was drawing on the tradition of radio broadcasts that Franklin D. Roosevelt had deployed so effectively in the Depression and war years. Reaching for some of that political magic, Truman's successor, Dwight Eisenhower, addressed the nation from the Oval no fewer than 21 times.
In our time, most Americans can still picture George W. Bush sitting at the Resolute Desk, flanked by the flags and family pictures, cataloging the losses of Sept. 11, 2001, and vowing righteous retribution to come.
President Ronald Reagan addresses the nation from the Oval Office regarding the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster.
President Lyndon B. Johnson talks to the nation in a radio and television broadcast from his desk at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 31, 1968. The president concluded his address with the statement, "I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination for another term as president."
Trump is also old enough to remember Lyndon B. Johnson giving the nation a shock in March 1968 by announcing he would not seek re-election as president. Or Richard Nixon, six years later, announcing he would resign rather than face possible impeachment and removal from office.
But even before those archival moments, the Oval Office TV address carried a special cachet. Much of that came from John F. Kennedy's somber, breathtaking announcement in October 1962 that the U.S. Navy was blockading Cuba to prevent the delivery of Soviet missiles to launch sites there. That was the moment when "televised Oval Office address" became a trigger for cardiac episodes.
During a televised speech in 1962, President John F. Kennedy announces the strategic blockade of Cuba by the U.S. fleet.
Perhaps no Oval Office address has been as portentous since, but many have been hinges of history. Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter referenced this in an interview on Breitbart News Tonight earlier this month, urging Trump to give such a speech on the wall-shutdown issue. And Monday evening, Coulter tweeted that this week's Oval Office address should be a "serious" one "explaining why a Wall is the only compassionate solution."
We need 1 thing from President Trump: A serious Oval Office speech explaining why a Wall is the only compassionate solution.
Trump has appeared to be influenced by Coulter before. But we should also remember that, for all his success using alternative means of political messaging, he remains a child of the TV age. Born in 1946, Trump's formative years would have occurred in the 1950s — an observation that may also shed some light on what Trump is alluding to when he says he wants to "Make America Great Again."
Whatever else one might say about it, that was an era when an address from the Oval Office carried with it the impact and gravity associated with great power and great respect. That was the era in which the president was an iconic father figure, Dwight Eisenhower to be precise, the leading American military hero of World War II and arguably the first TV president.
President Dwight Eisenhower reports to the nation on his goodwill journey through Latin America.
When Ike spoke to the nation he did it with a slightly pained air of importance and authority. The impression he left was of the resigned paterfamilias, the gray eminence who brought difficult news because someone had to do it.
That is a mode Trump might well seek to emulate when he faces the nation Tuesday night and appeals for funds for a southern border wall.
GREENBELT, Md. – Nineteen men were charged in a federal racketeering indictment that accuses them of killings and other violent crimes as members of the MS-13 (search) gang.
The indictments released Thursday say the men committed shootings, kidnappings and other gang-related crimes from April 2003 through June of this year. Six people were slain and gang members allegedly attempted to kill five others.
Montgomery County (search) police arrested 12 people this month after MS-13-related attacks in which six teens were stabbed at a high school and shopping mall. Prince George's County (search) police are investigating possible MS-13 links to recent stabbings as well.
The federal indictment, which a grand jury handed up Tuesday, accuses the 19 men of violating federal racketeering law. It does not charge them with individual crimes such as homicide or assault.
MS-13, also known as Mara Salvatrucha (search), originated in Los Angeles among Central American immigrants. An estimated 10,000 MS-13 members are in the United States, many in the Washington suburbs, which have a large population of Central American immigrants.