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On this date in 1962, partisan Gheorghe Arsenescu was put to death at Bucharest’s Jilava Prison. Arsenescu was a leader and co-founder of one of Romania’s several bands of anti-communist resistance units. Arsenescu’s Haiducii Muscelului — the Muscel Outlaws — were a band of 30 to 40 in the Carpathian fooothills who scarcely posed a serious threat to the Romanian state, but who nevertheless managed to elude capture for nine solid years in the 1950’s. (More about the Haiducii in this Romanian pdf.) Arsenescu was finally nabbed in 1960, a few months after his former comrades Toma and Petre Arnautoiu...

In a new twist in the investigation into the Biden crime family’s shady foreign business dealings, a former Obama official has come forward alleging he has evidence the then-Vice President Joe Biden was involved in a “kickback scheme” with his son Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings. The unlikely source will add new weight to the investigation and further legitimize the claims that Joe Biden is a criminal. Mike McCormick, who served in the Obama White House as a stenographer for 15 years, said the FBI completely ignored him when he offered to testify under oath before the federal grand jury...

Romania must legalise same-sex civil unions, Europe's top rights court ruled on Tuesday, in a victory for LGBTQ+ campaigners in the socially conservative southeastern European country. Twenty-one same-sex couples took Romania to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), arguing the lack of legal recognition of their relationships "deprived them of their dignity as spouses". In a ruling on Tuesday, the ECHR found the country had violated Article 8 of the European Convention, which protects the right to respect for family life, by not giving LGBTQ+ couples any means of legally safeguarding their relationships. The Romanian couples cited the disadvantages...

While his father was vice president in 2016, Hunter Biden met with a State Department official on behalf of a Romanian businessman who paid the troubled first son more than $1 million to help his corruption case, raising questions about whether the younger Biden engaged in unregistered foreign lobbying. A review of emails and documents on Hunter Biden's laptop reveal a March 2016 meeting with then-U.S. ambassador to Romania Hans Klemm on the topic of a corruption case against Gabriel Popoviciu, a Romanian real estate tycoon. Popoviciu made more than $1 million in wire payments to Biden from November 2015...

President Joe Biden and his family are at the center of an influence-peddling scheme in which they traded the patriarch’s decades of time in political offices to line their own pockets and then tried to cover up their profiteering with a myriad of complicated transactions and accounts, the House Oversight Committee confirmed during a press conference on Wednesday. With the help of whistleblowers and congressional subpoenas, Republicans are confidently reporting that the Bidens received at least $10 million worth of diluted payments from foreign companies during and after the president’s time in the Obama White House. These payments were diced...

The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee mounted more attacks Wednesday against President Joe Biden and his family, alleging that relatives of the president engaged in business with foreign nationals. Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., sent a memorandum Wednesday morning to Republican members of the panel, which is investigating the finances of the Biden family, about what he described as information that the committee had recently received from subpoenas from four different banks. The memo said the subpoenas were “tailored to specific individuals and companies that engaged in business activities with Biden family members and their business associates.” It does...

WASHINGTON — House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer identified nine members of President Biden’s family Wednesday who allegedly received foreign income after teasing the bombshell for weeks. “Since you asked, I’ll tell you,” Comer (R-Ky.) told a rapt room of reporters at the Capitol after laying out new bank record evidence showing first son Hunter Biden received $1 million from a corrupt Romanian businessman while his dad was vice president. “Joe Biden’s son [Hunter], Joe Biden’s brother [James], Joe Biden’s brother’s wife [Sara], Hunter Biden’s girlfriend or Beau Biden’s widow [Hallie], however, you want to write that, Hunter Biden’s ex-wife...

Lawmakers investigating the Biden family’s foreign business deals say family members received millions of dollars in payments from foreign nationals while President Biden was serving as vice president in the Obama administration. The information, discovered in bank documents obtained by Republican investigators, showed the Biden family and their business associates used a “complicated, suspicious,” web of 20 companies to launder $10 million in payments from foreign nationals, and many of the transactions took place while Mr. Biden was vice president, lawmakers said. The companies were based in Romania and China, among other countries, and several business associates who paid the...

The Biden family and its business associates created a complicated web of more than 20 companies, according to bank records obtained by the House Oversight Committee — a system GOP lawmakers say was meant to conceal money received from foreign nationals. Sixteen of the companies were limited liability companies formed during Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president, the committee said in a press conference on Wednesday. The Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received more than $10 million from foreign nationals’ and their related companies, the records show. These payments occurred both while Biden was in office as...

Please watch video. Bannon protégée Natalie Winters breaks story of Biden getting bribes from Romania

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Romania on Monday to underscore Western support for a key NATO ally that borders Ukraine and also for neighbouring Moldova, which has looked especially vulnerable since Russia's invasion last year. Moldovan President Maia Sandu, who accuses Moscow of fomenting unrest in her tiny former Soviet republic, met Scholz and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis in Bucharest, pressing for support to speed up Moldova's accession to the European Union. Russia denies causing trouble in Moldova, which is situated between Romania and Ukraine. Scholz's visit to Bucharest comes a day after German armsmaker Rheinmetall (RHMG.DE) announced it was...

Moldovan President Maia Sandu has stated that Russia wants to use her country against Ukraine like the Kremlin uses Belarus. Sandu said Russia is trying to undermine and overthrow the government in Chișinău, and the Moldovan authorities have evidence of such actions. "It is clear that Russia is trying to install a pro-Russian government in Chișinău to use Moldova against Ukraine, as is the case, for example, with Belarus," the president said. She recalled the recent statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding his intention to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. "This is exactly what Russia wants to do...

NICOSIA – Nearly a half-century after Turkish invasions seized the northern third of the island – where it keeps some 35,000 troops still – Cyprus’ new President Nicos Christoulides said more will be spent on defense. He said that 2 percent of the Gross Domestic Product of 26.42 billion euros ($28.41 billion) – about 52.8 million euros ($56.77 million) would be spent on the Armed Forces in different areas. That comes as the United States is lifting a decades-long arms embargo that held down Cypriot defense while Turkey was buying American arms without conditions and has a huge military advantage...

Moldova’s parliament on Thursday (16 March) approved a law on referring to the national language as Romanian in all legislative texts and the constitution, despite opposition from a pro-Moscow communist party. The move is intended to resolve a heated dispute over whether the national language should be referred to as Romanian or Moldovan. The constitution currently refers to the national language as Moldovan, but Moldova’s 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union stipulated that Romanian is the official language. Moldova’s governing PAS party proposed the draft law to bring the constitution into line with a constitutional court ruling in...

A secret plan drawn up by Russia’s security service, the FSB, lays out detailed options to destabilize Moldova – including supporting pro-Russian groups, utilizing the Orthodox Church and threatening to cut off supplies of natural gas. The document appears to have been drawn up to thwart Moldova’s tilt to the West, which includes closer relations with NATO and an application to join the European Union. It repeatedly refers to the importance of preventing Moldova from joining NATO. (snip)The document sets out a 10-year strategy for bringing Moldova, a former Soviet republic sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, within Russia’s sphere of...

Police in Moldova said they foiled a plot by groups of Russia-backed actors who were trained to cause mass unrest during a Sunday protest against the country’s new pro-Western government. The head of Moldova’s police, Viorel Cernauteanu, said in a news conference that an undercover agent had infiltrated groups of “diversionists,” some Russian citizens, who allegedly were promised $10,000 to organize “mass disorder” during the protest in the capital, Chisinau. Seven people were detained, he said. Separately, police said they arrested 54 protesters, including 21 minors, who exhibited “questionable behavior” or were found to be carrying prohibited items, including at...

The US intelligence community believes that individuals with ties to Russian intelligence are planning to stage protests in Moldova to try to foment a manufactured insurrection against the Moldovan government, with the ultimate goal of seeing a more pro-Russia administration installed there, White House officials said Friday. The US believes that Russia is working to weaken the Moldovan government which is seeking closer ties with the European Union, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby said, The US is also seeing signs that Russian government-linked actors could provide training to anti-government demonstrators in Moldova. The country’s capital, Chisinau,...

In February, Moldovan president Maia Sandu publicly accused Russia of plotting to overthrow her government — an allegation first made days before by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Russia quickly denied the claim and turned the tables, accusing Ukraine of planning a false flag attack against the separatist Moldovan region of Transnistria. In Moldova, pro-Russian voices dismissed the coup plot as Moldovan propaganda. "They say that this all is a hoax," said Valeriu Paşa, chairman of WatchDog.MD, a think tank based in Moldova's capital, Chisinau. "[They say] President Sandu [is using] these scary stories in order to make people forget about...

The Defense Ministry of the breakaway Transnistria region of Moldova said on Tuesday that the next military exercise by the “peacekeeping contingent” in the region will begin on March 1. "The peacekeeping contingent of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic continues to accept applications for participation in the next three-month training camp from March 1," the ministry said in a statement. The statement came a day after the head of the breakaway Transnistria region, Vadim Krasnoselsky, said there is “no real danger” in the region, amid claims by Russia that Ukraine is preparing an "armed provocation" in the region.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis discussed energy, economic and security issues in Bucharest Thursday with his visiting Moldovan counterpart, as the two neighbors seek to boost ties amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. Iohannis' office said the talks with Moldovan President Maia Sandu would aim to bring her country closer to the 27-nation European Union, to which Romania belongs. Afterwards, Sandu said Moldova’s strategic partnership with NATO-member Romania is yielding "concrete benefits." (snip) Sandu’s visit came a week after she claimed Moscow was allegedly plotting to overthrow Moldova’s government, put the nation "at the disposal of Russia," and derail its aspirations to...