ROMANIA: Man Leaps Off Parliament Balcony In Austerity Protest.

GUARDIAN/
    A man flung himself from the Parliament chamber balcony in an apparent protest over recent austerity measures.
    TV engineer Adrian Sobaru fell 23 ft onto some benches as PM Emil Boc was greeting legislators.
   His injuries were not life-threatening and no one else was injured.
   Boc postponed the session, calling the incident "a tragedy that shocked me" and appealling for calm "in these tough times".
    Boc has recently increased the sales tax from 19 to 24% just to keep the budget deficit at 6.8% in 2010. Still, the economy is expected to decline by 2% this year.

 FOR :59 VIDEO With AD, SEE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYaIJqijhnQ&feature=player_embedded#!

ROMANIA: Interior Minister Resigns After Police Strike.

BLOOMBERG/      Interior Minister Vasile Blaga (pictured) resigned after last week's strike by at least five thousand police officers over a proposed 25% wage cut.
 “This is a resignation of honor,” Blaga said. “Police have the right to protest just like any other citizen, but they have to do it legally. They and all the other workers from the Interior Ministry have to understand that they are as important as doctors and teachers, so they can’t make an exception.”
 Meanwhile, perhaps 10,000 public employees tomorrow plan on testing PM Emil Boc’s austerity measures and end his rule.
  Boc’s coalition, with 258 seats in the 471-member parliament, survived a June no-confidence vote... by eight votes.

ROMANIA: PM Boc Shakes Up Cabinet, Firing Finance, Economy Ministers.

REUTERS/  By Radu Marinas and Luiza Ilie/  
     Facing a confidence vote after raising taxes and drastically cutting public employee pay to qualify for international aid, PM Emil Boc (pictured) replaced his finance and economy ministers plus four others. Boc has been harshly criticized by unions and opposition leaders for  austerity measures, including a 5% increase in the VAT and a huge 25 % cut in public employee wages. His government survived a June no-confidence motion by just eight votes. His party's popularity has shrunk to just... 13% in recent polls.

ROMANIA: IMF Demands It Must Pay Old Debts...To Get $1.1 Billion Tranche.

BLOOMBERG/ Andra Timu and Irina Savu/    The government of PM Emil Boc (pictured) must prove to the IMF that it has paid $567 million usd to private health-care companies before late September to receive 900 million euros ($1.1 billion usd) of a 20 billion-euro bailout from the IMF, European Commission and other international lenders. Romania is the EU's second poorest country. The IMF lender has “been very concerned with the arrears problem because it’s a vicious circle when the government doesn’t pay its bills,” said an official.

ROMANIA: Some Wish For Ceausescu's "Old Order."

BLOOMBRG/     Romanians are facing severe budget cuts to avoid becoming the next Greece which makes some long for the ordered days of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. To them Ceausescu stood for “order and stability." Now PM Emil Boc faces a no-confidence in parliament over budget-cutting measures to reduce public wages by 25% and pensions and jobless benefits by 15%. The IMF and investors have poured 22.4 billion euros into Romania since it joined the EU.
 (Foto of PM Emil Boc)