Bucharest Plans Crackdown on Stray Dogs After Executive Savaged

[shugah]

Bucharest Plans Crackdown on Stray Dogs After Executive Savaged

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Bucharest plans to double the number of dog catchers after a Japanese businessman was savaged to death by one of the 200,000 strays that roam the Romanian capital.

Hajime Hori, the 68-year-old former head of ball-bearing maker JTEKT Corp.'s local unit, was killed yesterday outside his apartment in the affluent neighborhood bordering Palatul Victoriei, the seat of Romania's government, police said.

``We are taking radical measures after this tragic event,'' Bucharest Vice Mayor Razvan Murgeanu said at a press conference today. The city will increase the number of dogcatchers with tranquilizer guns to 12 teams of two from six.

There's one stray dog in Bucharest for every 10 citizens, and more than 80 people a day report for medical treatment and anti- rabies shots after canine attacks in the city, which is aiming to become a European Union capital as early as next year. The wild dogs originated in the 1980s under the communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, who tore down sections of the city for building projects and prompted dog owners to put their pets on the street.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=av7YTevET8.o&refer=europe

[saigon68]

1. THEY NEED THE U. S. MARINES They have experience.

Marines hunt Fallujah's stray dogs feeding on human corpses





A stray dog feeds on an Iraqi corpse. Marines are now hunting down stray animals grown fat on the flesh from corpses and which could harbor rabies Photo AFP/Cris Bouroncle.

AFP
December 9, 2004

FALLUJAH, Iraq - US troops fire off another volley of shots amid the trashed houses of Fallujah, hunting down new adversaries carrying a potentially deadly weapon that threatens to plague reconstruction efforts.

But this time the marines are not chasing down the insurgents who they defeated in a devastating assault on the city last month. Their quarry is stray animals grown fat on the flesh from corpses and who could harbor rabies.

[On the Road]

2. I Don't Remember Those Dogs

I walked all around Bucharest a few years ago. That was not the kind of risk I was expecting.