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Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci has teamed up with the Transylvanian Haferland Festival 50 years after she score the world's first perfect 10 at the Montreal Olympic Games. In a video, the star gymnast called it "a great joy to take part in the Haferland Festival," which has been revived Saxon traditions in Transylvanian villages that look out of a fairy...

SUNDAY READ: These discussions underscored how the Jewish state is facing the world's most intensive internal cultural war My friend Rabbi Heshy Grossman recently invited me to Jerusalem to meet top Haredi (meaning ultra-Orthodox) rabbis. Unhappy with my critical writings about the Haredim, this well-meaning true believer hoped to jump-start fruitful dialogue. I took the train to Jerusalem and spent...

The National Bank of Romania had the honor and pleasure of opening the OECD / INFE – Romania Symposium on Financial Education, in partnership with the Financial Supervisory Authority and the Romanian Association of Banks. The symposium took place at the National Museum of Art of Romania, in the Throne Room, where Romania's architectural and cultural heritage has deep...

It’s worth taking a look at March to May 2026: Donald Trump's authoritarian regime in the making and Vladimir Putin's dictatorship have simultaneously fallen into the hands of Volodymyr Zelensky's Ukraine. Trump has seen himself in this position twice in the span of only two months thanks to Iran and Russia. In the case of Iran, Trump needed Ukrainian advice...

It is Europe Day on Saturday, but President Nicusor Dan used the occasion to promise Romanians a ‘pro-Western government’. The nuance may be lost on some,  but ‘pro-Western’ covers hard-right group AUR who are pro-MAGA, i.e Pro-American, i.e. pro-Western (even though AUR are anti-Ukraine and critical of Brussels). President Dan has promised to keep the far-right party out of government after...

Prime Minister lie Bolojan who was dismissed by Parliament this week in a no-confidence vote on Saturday told supporters that it was a 'tough fight'  to modernize Romania which preserved ‘deep roots of communism’ "For years, a power mechanism with deep roots in communism has survived in Romania, a system in which some advanced through personal connections, not competence, in...

The fourth edition of the Cluj Chamber Music Festival is currently running in Cluj-Napoca from 7–17 May 2026, with concerts spread across churches, salons, alternative venues, and institutional spaces around the city. The festival is organized by The National Theatre Cluj-Napoca (Opera Națională Română Cluj) and focuses on chamber music in the broader sense, from Schubert lieder and sacred...

Romania's political crisis and the fall of the Ilie Bolojan government was a topic of discussion on respected UK radio station, Monocle Radio. Universul director Alison Mutler offered her analysis which can be heard from minute 12.33. Here's the link. What’s next for Romania? After parliament toppled prime minister Ilie Bolojan in a no-confidence vote backed by the left-wing PSD and...

Cristian Lica, a Romanian rebel, entrepreneur and explorer, who founded a museum devoted to Romanian kitsch and was famous for his global travels, has died in the middle of a trip around the world. He had just turned 50. His family said Lica died of a heart attack overnight in New York on May 7. Doctors were unable to resuscitate...

Months after a global wave of increased vigilance introduced stricter age-verification requirements under online safety laws, new research suggests the measures are proving ineffective at preventing children from accessing harmful online content. In some cases, children have cleverly bypassed age-detection systems by drawing a mustache on their faces. A new report by UK online safety organisation Internet Matters found that many...