Dismissed for not predicting cold snap

ROMANIA: Mr Ion Poiana, the head of Romania's National Meteorology Agency, was fired for failing to predict accurately a cold snap that has killed three Romanians, closed dozens of roads and major ports and covered parts of the Black Sea with a skein of ice.

"We took this decision due to the lousy weather forecasts we have had lately," the Environment Minister, Mr Sulfina Barbu, said of Mr Poiana's sacking.

"We believe that modern technology for weather forecasting was not used properly, with the result that mayors from all over the country received the wrong warnings," he told the Adevarul newspaper.

Blizzards closed major Black Sea ports as temperatures dropped and helicopters airlifted food to dozens of villages in eastern Romania.

Military vehicles were used in neighbouring Bulgaria to reach scores of snowbound towns and villages. The country's national lottery was cancelled for the fist time in more than 25 years this week, because many tickets could not be delivered to the capital for the draw.

Meanwhile, at least three men have frozen to death in Bosnia after being caught outside as temperatures plunged this week, while three others died of hypothermia in Croatia and four in Albania. In Macedonia, an army captain was found frozen solid just metres from his guard post in the Sar mountains on the border with Kosovo.

Villagers in the remote area had to drive off wolves and wild boar searching for food and, according to the Albanian newspaper Metropol, wolves devoured one man.