Bucharest

A statue of V. I. Lenin was set on fire in Bucharest in an apparent protest against Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, Western diplomats in the Romanian capital reported Sunday. Tires soaked in gasoline were placed around the 50-foot-tall statue of the founder of the Soviet Union and set on fire during the night attack about a week ago, a diplomat told Reuters news agency by telephone. The statue, outside the headquarters of Romania's official media, was not seriously damaged.

As Romanian military and civilian officials mingled at a VIP reception aboard a yacht that belonged to executed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, a U.S. Navy band played an American selection: the Gershwins, Cole Porter and Broadway show tunes. The occasion was Romanian Navy Day, but the message being delivered at this Black Sea port was broader than pride in the country's sailors: America, we are with you. If the musical choices weren't enough, the blunt-talking defense minister, Gabriel Oprea, made it crystal clear in his Navy Day speech, solemnly listing the names of "the heroes" who have been killed in Afghanistan.

Security forces opened fire on crowds of anti-government protesters shouting "Down, Ceausescu!" in the Romanian capital of Bucharest today and several demonstrators were killed, Yugoslav radio reported. Military tanks rolled through the city and formed a circle around several thousand mostly young people at a main intersection in an effort to control the burgeoning unrest, said a Yugoslav reporter.

The title of Romanian director's Corneliu Porumboiu's new film, which has been receiving enthusiastic tributes at film festivals across the world, is indicative of its conflicted -- one might even say confused -- loyalties. "Police" immediately conveys memories of an entire flotilla of detective films and cop thrillers. But "Adjective"? What is a jarring word like "adjective" doing in a film title? There is, as it turns out, a very precise adjective Porumboiu, director of the acclaimed "12:08 East of Bucharest," has in mind, and it is "intermediate."

Alan Green Jr., the new U.S. ambassador to Romania, presented his credentials on Wednesday to President Nicolae Ceausescu in Bucharest.

Masked men burned down a synagogue in a provincial Romanian town in what is believed to be the first such attack in the country since the anti-Semitic terror under German occupation in World War II, members of the Bucharest Jewish community said. They said at least two assailants stabbed and seriously injured the janitor of the 18th-Century temple in Buhusi, about 160 miles north of Bucharest. The attackers then set fire to the building by pouring gasoline on the walls.

Three levels below the basement of the Romanian Communist Party's Central Committee building, there is a bunker built strong enough to withstand a nuclear attack. One room of its command center contains a wall of Japanese- and American-made equipment. It has now been shot to pieces, its wiring and circuitry ripped loose. This was where Nicolae Ceausescu's Praetorian Guard, the fanatical presidential protection unit of the Securitate, was prepared to make its last stand in defense of its leader.

President Nicolae Ceausescu agreed Sunday to hold regular talks with the United States about Romania's human rights performance after Secretary of State George P. Shultz warned that unless the Communist regime eases the repression of its people, it could lose vital U.S. trade concessions. A senior U.S. official said Ceausescu agreed to the new round of diplomatic consultations, although he defended his record on human rights and denied charges of religious persecution.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev departs today on a three-day visit to Romania, the East Bloc Communist nation thought to be the least susceptible to his ideas of glasnost, or openness. It is the only Warsaw Pact nation that Gorbachev has not yet visited since becoming Soviet leader. From Bucharest, the Romanian capital, Gorbachev will go to East Berlin on Wednesday for a meeting of the Warsaw Pact nations.

Archbishop Valerian Trifa, head of the Michigan-based Romanian Orthodox Church before he was deported from the United States in 1984 for concealing his wartime links to the Nazis, died Wednesday after a heart attack, authorities said. He was 72. Trifa was head of the 35,000-member Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of North America when he was stripped of his U.S. citizenship and deported for lying about his role as a leader of the Nazi Iron Guard in Romania. The U.S.

At first, fans politely applauded the Roma performers sharing a stage in Bucharest with Madonna. Then the pop star condemned widespread discrimination against Roma, or Gypsies -- and the cheers gave way to jeers. The sharp mood change that swept the crowd of 60,000, who had packed a park for Wednesday night's concert on the singer's "Sticky and Sweet" tour, underscores how prejudice against Gypsies remains deeply entrenched across Eastern Europe. Madonna did not react to the crowd and carried on with her concert.

The level of political debate found on television may hardly seem the stuff of artistic inspiration, but writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu could never shake an on-air contretemps he watched in his tiny hometown of Vaslui, in the eastern part of Romania, in 1999. "The debate was if there was or was not a revolution there," he recalls, referring to the momentous 1989 ousting of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

AFI Fest 2006 at the ArcLight closes this weekend, so it's worth mentioning a couple of highlights in its last days. One of the undisputed triumphs of the lineup is writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu's sneakily funny and surprisingly affecting first feature, "12:08 East of Bucharest," which turns very real contentions about post-Communist Romania into a deadpan satire about memory, media and the inability to move forward.

CORINA SUTEU isn't happy to tell the true story behind "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," the widely honored new Romanian film that traces the ill-fated journey of a paramedic and her patient. But Suteu's voice stays focused as she describes what happened that night in Bucharest. "Unfortunately, I am obliged to tell you it is true," she says. "But it was a huge scandal." In 1997, it seems, a female paramedic took a 52-year-old man to one hospital, then a second, a third, five in all.

Bucharest Mayor Traian Basescu won an unexpected victory in Romania's presidential runoff election, ending a decade of rule by former communists. Basescu, a former ship captain, vowed to fight corruption, restore press freedoms and prepare Romania to join the European Union. He has also said he supports greater rights for gays. He defeated Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, who was supported by outgoing President Ion Iliescu. Final results showed Basescu won 51.

No parking spaces. Crippling traffic jams. Sky-high rents. Is this London, Rome or Athens? No, it's Bucharest, where communism and capitalism have conspired to make it Europe's most crowded capital. The crowding began when dictator Nicolae Ceausescu set out to industrialize Romania overnight by forcing peasants into factories and making them live in tiny apartments in the capital. The inflow continues today as rootless young people come seeking their fortune.

Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu today blamed "fascist, reactionary groups" for anti-government protests in his country and confirmed that the army had to intervene to restore order. In a 25-minute address on national radio and television hours after he returned from a three-day visit to Iran, Ceausescu made no mention of casualties in the west Romanian city of Timisoara.

Prime Minister Petre Roman said Friday that his government had ordered miners to leave the capital, but the vigilante mobs beyond the control of any authority continued menacing the city until dusk. Roman defended a civilian crackdown by miners and other angry workers armed with clubs, pipes and metal-tipped rubber hoses as a "correct and justified" response to what he called an organized coup attempt against his government.

When "Children Underground" director Edet Belzberg bounded onto the stage at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival to accept a Special Jury Prize, it came as a bit of a shock. This woman made that movie? Belzberg is in her early 30s but looks younger, and more to the point seems ... well, not grizzled enough to have directed an in-your-face documentary about Romanian street kids who live in Bucharest's subway system, panhandle, beat one another up, sniff paint and engage in self-mutilation.

More and more around Southern California you can find places to experience the hearty cuisines of Eastern Europe, but until now you had to go outside Orange County. But O.C. at last has one of its own--and it's worth a look. Restaurant Bucharest is a high-ceilinged, attractive dinner house full of vinyl booths and potted plants, with an enormous bar area to one side. At one time this was a popular seafood place called Jimmy's. Before its current incarnation, it was an Italian restaurant.