News stories by Claudia Ciobanu, page 7

The death penalty was outlawed in Bulgaria in 1998. But restrictive legislation on conditional release, and the overcrowding and precariousness of the Bulgarian prison system makes life hardly livable for some lifers.

Trade unions in Romania and Bulgaria are embarking on a spring of protests in response to the governments’ anti-crisis measures involving considerable cuts in budget expenditure.

Campaigning by environmental groups and the general public has weakened the determination of the Bulgarian government to allow the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops in this country.

A textbook on human rights activism, being introduced in Romanian schools this year, steers away from preaching and uses interviews with global and local rights activists to suggest how young people may get involved.

The Czech Republic’s strong heritage of cooperative movements, dating from the interwar period, is serving as inspiration for new initiatives in the post-communist era and acting as 'harbingers of a new global economic system'.

Competing with the destruction caused by former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s ‘systematisation’ plans might be hard. But an official report says that 'the aggression on Bucharest’s architectural heritage, documented since 1989, exceeds Ceausescu’s acts.’’

Low-income Eastern Europeans contracting easy consumer loans in the mid- 2000s are now falling below poverty lines.

Hasun Albaadzh, an asylum-seeker from Syria, died Oct. 6 at the Busmantsi detention centre on the outskirts of Bulgarian capital Sofia. He had been held at Busmantsi for 34 months - considerably more than the maximum legal period of detention - and had been denied proper medical care.

Romania is heading for a week of massive protests by state employees. With the governing coalition collapsing last Friday, the new minority government will have a hard time navigating between the demands of the protesters and the austerity measures demanded by its international creditors.

Fair trade is becoming popular in Central and Eastern Europe, as activist groups raise awareness of the region's responsibility towards the rest of the world, and open an increasing number of fair trade shops and cafes.