18 March, 2016 UPDATE
A roundup of the latest local and international news.
Newsroom, 18.03.2016, 12:15
The leaders of the 28
EU member states on Friday reached a crucial deal with Turkey over the migrant
crisis, said the president of the European Council Donald Tusk. Under
the scheme, all refugees and migrants arriving in Greece from Sunday will be
returned to Turkey if their asylum application is rejected. Romania’s president
Klaus Iohannis, who attended the talks in Brussels, has hailed the agreement and has expressed confidence that it will significantly reduce and even halt the flow
of illegal migrants. He said the decisions taken on Friday do not contain
additional migrant quotas for Romania.
The Belgian police have confirmed the arrest
of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in last November’s terrorist attacks in Paris, in which 130 people were killed. Abdeslam was arrested during an anti-terrorism
raid in a Brussels district. Investigators confirmed that the man killed in a
police operation on Tuesday in Brussels was also linked to the Paris attacks.
11 persons have so far been charged in Belgium in connection with these
attacks.
The
Romanian state might lose the preemptive rights for the purchase of Constantin
Brancusi’s sculpture The Wisdom of the Earth if it fails to provide all of the
11 million euros within 14 days, as agreed, the current owners of the sculpture
have warned. Culture Minister Vlad Alexandrescu said on Thursday that the
government would contribute 5 million euros, while the rest of the sum would be
covered by public donations. Created in 1907, The Wisdom of the Earth was
seized by the communist regime in 1957 and exhibited at the Museum of Art of
Romania. In 2012, the sculpture was returned to the heirs of its original
owner.
The Romanian government will
join public institutions and organisations across the world celebrating Earth
Hour on Saturday. Lights will go out between 8.30 and 9.30 pm at the government
headquarters, as well as in other public institutions. 42 towns and cities
across Romania are taking part in this global event. Earth Hour was first
celebrated nine years ago in Australia to warn about climate change. Since
then, thousands of cities and communities around the world have joined the
initiative.
The products of a Romanian dairy
factory believed to be contaminated with the E.coli bacteria have been
withdrawn from the market, both in Romania and abroad, the head of the Romanian
food safety agency Andrei Butaru said on Friday. The agriculture minister Achim Irimescu said the contamination
was an accident and that all Romanian diary producers comply with the EU
regulations in the field. These statements were made several days after Italian
authorities issued an alert over a possible E.coli link to Romanian dairy
products as a Romanian child living in Italy was hospitalised. In the last two
months, three children from Arges county have died and many others were
in hospital with serious digestive problems.
Laura Codruta Kovesi, the chief prosecutor of
the National Anticorruption Directorate told the public radio station that no form of technical surveillance was used in more than half of the cases prosecuted last
year. She said the emergency order adopted by the government following a
decision of the Constitution Court banning the use of phone tapping in criminal
investigations was in line with the rule of law. Under the new government
order, phone tapping will be conducted by the prosecutor’s offices, while
the Romanian Intelligence Service is only authorised to carry out such
surveillance in cases involving national security and terrorism.
Romania’s rugby team face Georgia on
Saturday in Tbilisi in a match that will decide the winner of the European
Nations Cup. Romania have won all their four matches so far, against Portugal,
Spain, Russia and Germany. Last autumn, Romania, who are coached by Lynn
Howells, took part in the Rugby World Cup hosted by England, where they beat
Canada and lost to France, Ireland and Italy in the group stage.
(Translated by: C. Mateescu)
