2nd August

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Florentin Căpitănescu, 02.08.2013, 00:00

Romanian president Traian Basescu on Friday chaired a meeting of the country’s Higher Defence Council. High on the agenda were talks on the uncompleted privatization of the Freight Division of the state-owned Romanian Railway Company CFR. The auction for the majority share package has been won by a local bidder, which pledged to buy 51% of the shares for 200 million euros and invest the same amount in the freight company’s assets. After the resignation of former Transport minister Relu Fenechiu, whose position has been taken over by Prime Minister Victor Ponta, this privatization sparked off a dispute between the presidency and the government. We recall the Romanian authorities pledged to privatize CFR Freight Division, a major state-owned company, as part of their agreement with international financiers.

29.5 % of Romanians fear prices going up, 28.6% fear losing their job, and 17.5% fear loss of income, according an opinion poll in July. 65.5% of Romanians do not like the direction in which the country is going. The poll was run in 37 counties and Bucharest, contracted by a daily paper in the capital. More after the news.

Andreea Chiru, who is 20 years old, won Romania’s Miss World 2013 beauty pageant on Thursday in Bucharest. She will be representing Romania at the Miss World 2013 competition in Indonesia in September. The Miss World pageant was created in 1951 as the first, and now oldest, world beauty pageant.

In Zabul province in Afghanistan, the Romanian soldiers in the Black Wolves batallion take over duty from the Yellow Scorpions after a six month tour. The new battalion will be pairing up with American and Afghan troups. 1,600 Romanian troops are deployed in Afghanistan, and will be withdrawing in 2014. 200 officers and specialized troops will stay behind to train local forces.

Syrian businessman Omar Hayssam, who holds Romanian citizenship, has been arrested for embezzlement and racketeering, for damages assessed at 20 million Euro. Hayssam has been linked to the infamous case of Romanian journalists abducted in Iraq in 2005, and has been sentenced to 20 years in jail in absentia for acts of terrorism. In 2006 he managed to flee Romania while released on bail. Hayssam has been brought to the country from Syria, where he had been arrested and sentenced to four years imprisonment in a separate case.