April 8, 2019

Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 08.04.2019, 14:24

DRILL Sea Shield 2019, a military drill involving the
participation of more than two thousand servicemen from six countries, is
underway in Constanta, Romania’s main Black Sea port. Participants will these
days be training in order to be able to respond to various types of attacks, coming
from submarines, battleships or warplanes in the Black Sea. According to
Vice-admiral Alexandru Mîrşu, the Romanian Navy Chief of Staff, the structure
coordinating the exercise, the drill’s scenario is a fictional one being by no
means provocative. NATO has beefed up its presence in the Black Sea from 80 to
120 days per year and the NATO Mine Countermeasures Group made up of ships from
the Netherlands, Canada, Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania is proof of the
Alliance’s commitment to protecting the eastern flank, preventing conflicts and
keeping peace in the region.

SPORT As of today until April 14th
over 600 athletes from 40 countries are attending the European Wrestling
Championships in Bucharest, a competition where Romania is represented by 30
athletes. Romania has hosted the aforementioned competition for the second time
now, after the 1979 edition. Athletes from Romania walked away with five medals
from the European Championships in 2018: one gold, one silver and three bronze.
Romanian Elena Andries has won three gold medals, in the jerk, snatch and total
events of the European Weightlifting Championships in Batumi, Georgia. Cosmina
Pana and Cristian Marian Luca, also from the Romanian delegation have won two
bronze medals in the jerk and snatch events of the same competition. 14
athletes from Romania are participating in the Batumi competition, which offers
points for qualification for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

VOTE The Senate in Bucharest is today debating the simple motion
tabled by the opposition National Liberal Party and Save Romania Union against
Justice Minister Tudorel Toader. The document signatories say the tensions that
are facing the legal system would be defused by the sacking of the current
justice minister. Another argument is the latest amendments to the Penal and
Penal Procedure Codes through emergency ordinance is impacting Romania’s legal
system running against the recommendations of the European institutions. On March
20th, the Chamber of Deputies rejected another simple motion
against the Justice Minister.

NARCOTICS Several cocaine packages have
washed up on the Romanian shore in tourist resorts. They are the remnants of a
transport evaluated to weigh around a ton, carried by a boat that capsized two
weeks ago around the town of Tulcea. Since then, hundreds of gendarmes and
police divers assisted by prosecutors have swept 90 km of Romanian coastline.
The police, continuing the search for suspect material washing up on the beach,
called on people to announce the authorities when finding such packages without
tampering with them. The police said that the drugs are highly concentrated and
dangerous if consumed. Organized crime prosecutors claim that the cocaine
capture has a market value estimated at 300 million Euro. So far, 131 kilograms
of drugs have been recovered.

FILE Romania’s chief prosecutor,
Augustin Lazar has today announced that the Military Prosecutors’ Department
has submitted to court the indictment in the file of the anticommunist
revolution of 1989. The file has over three thousand pages, the prosecutor added
apologizing for the excessively long inquiry period of nearly 30 years. The
country’s former leftist president, Ion Iliescu, and Deputy Prime Minister Gelu
Voican have been placed under criminal investigation in this file for crimes
against humanity committed upon the demise of the communist regime between
December 22nd and 31st 1989. The aforementioned persons held
various official positions in the then FSN council, a body that had executive
and legislative power at the time. The revolution’s official death toll stays
at over one thousand dead and three thousand wounded, mostly after the collapse
of the oppressive dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. Romania was the only
country in eastern and central Europe which passed from a dictatorship to
democracy through bloodshed.

(translated by bill)