4 August 2019, UPDATE

A roundup of local and international news.

Newsroom, 04.08.2019, 18:52

Caracal killings. Investigators continued searches on Sunday at the home of Gheorghe
Dincă from Caracal, in southern Romania, the man who said, after being detained
more than a week ago, that he killed two teenagers, 15-year-old Alexandra Măceşanu
and 18-year-old Luiza Melencu. New biological samples were collected from the
suspect’s courtyard and home. The Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime
and Terrorism (DIICOT), which is conducting the inquiry, said the ash collected
from Dincă’s home only showed traces of Alexandra’s DNA, the girl who went missing on the 24th of
July, which confirms the suspect’s statements that he burned her body. While the
investigators were conducting searches at Dincă’s home, locals came to leave
candles outside the house in memory of the two girls. A religious services was
also held on Sunday at the Orthodox Cathedral in Caracal.

Treaty. The foreign
ministry in Bucharest has posted a message on its official Twitter page saying
Romania stands together with the United States and its NATO allies on the INF
nuclear treaty, which has ceased to exist. Russia and the US announced on
Friday the cessation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned missiles with
ranges between 500 and 5,500 km. Washington said it would withdraw from the
treaty back in February. Moscow reacted on the same day, saying it too would
pull out. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has accused Russia of being in
material breach of the treaty, with Moscow repeatedly rejecting the accusation.
The INF pact, which was signed by the US and the former USSR in 1987, banned ground-launched
missiles with short and medium ranges.

Tourism. More than five million tourists were reported in Romania in the
first six months of the year, less than last year, according to the National
Institute for Statistics. The majority were Romanian, with foreign visitors
accounting for under 21%. Among foreign tourists, most of them came from
Europe, 85% of whom from the EU. 115,000 tourists came from Germany, and around
92,000 from Italy and Israel each. The visitors used mostly road and air
travel.

Festival. The British singer Robbie
Williams featured on the last day of Untold, a big electronic music festival
hosted by the city of Cluj-Napoca, in north-western Romania. The four-day festival has brought together 200 acts on its ten different
stages.

Fair. Seven Romanian clothes manufacturers are taking part in an
economic mission in Atlanta, in the US, in an event meant to promote the
creative industries and exports of quality products with high added value. The
seven companies are attending for the first time one of the biggest fashion
fairs in the US, hoping to forge collaborations with US companies, writes a
statement from the ministry for business, trade and entrepreneurship in
Bucharest.

Tennis. The Romanian tennis player ranked 223rd in the world Patricia
Maria Ţig on Sunday won the final of the tournament in Karlsruhe, in Germany, defeating the world no. 65 Alison van Uytvanck of Belgium in three sets. Ţig, who won in 1 hour and 38 minutes, has only won two WTA finals in her career, the first in Baku in 2015 and again in Bucharest last month