Romanian lawmakers began to debate on Wednesday whether Bran Castle, commonly known as Dracula's Castle, was legally returned to owner Dominic Habsburg and whether he is allowed to sell it.
The Transylvanian castle, which has featured in many movies, was returned to Archduke Dominic Habsburg, the son of Princess Ileana, in May last year. The princess had been given the castle in exchange for good deeds done by the royal family, which ruled Romania from 1866 until the communist era.
The 14th century castle was confiscated by the communists in 1948.
PHOTO:AP
Habsburg, 69, an architect from North Salem, New York, pledged to keep it open as a museum until 2009. He offered to sell the castle last year to local authorities for US$80 million, but the offer was rejected because it was too expensive.
Opposition lawmaker Dumitru Ioan Puchianu said on Wednesday during a parliamentary debate that the return of the castle to Habsburg was illegal due to procedural errors. He said that Habsburg is legally not allowed to sell it. Lawmakers ended the debate without voting on the issue.
In a letter released on Wednesday, Habsburg's lawyers said he would launch a lawsuit for 150 million euros (US$210 million) in damages if Parliament voted that the restitution and sale plans were illegal.
"I live once more with the feeling of dread in which I once lived, as a child, when my family and I were forced out of our home and thrown out into the streets in midwinter," he said in a letter addressed to Parliament and calling on lawmakers not to allow "such a dreadful injustice to happen."
The Bran Castle, perched on a cliff near Brasov in mountainous central Romania, is a major tourist attraction because of its ties to Prince Vlad the Impaler, the warlord whose cruelty inspired Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.
Legend has it that Vlad, who earned his nickname because of the way he tortured his enemies, spent one night in the 1400s at the castle.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS