April 12, 2015 UPDATE
A roundup of local and international news
Newsroom, 12.04.2015, 12:15
Orthodox, Greek-Catholic and neo-Protestant believers celebrate Easter, including in Romania, a majority Orthodox country. On Saturday night, people usually go to church to attend the Easter Vigil. A few minutes before midnight, the priest appears at the altar holding a lit candle. Everybody lights their candles and say Christ has risen. People return home keeping their candles burning. At the Patriarchal Cathedral in Bucharest, the head of the Romanian Orthodox Church, patriarch Daniel, urged believers to pray for the Christians who suffer for their faith.
Standard & Poor’s rating agency affirmed its BBB-/A-3 long- and short-term rating for Romania, with a stable outlook. Romania’s ratings could be raised if the authorities continue budgetary consolidation and manage to restructure state enterprises, the agency says. It is estimated that Romania’s economy will grow by around 3% in the next 4 years and that domestic demand will play an increasing part in achieving this growth rate. In the opinion of Standard % Poor’s the risks faced by the Romanian economy are a low rate of absoption of European funds, the regional political context and a lower-than-estimated inflows of foreign direct investment.
Romania’s foreign minister Bogdan Aurescu will attend an informal ministerial conference with the states in the EU’s southern neighbourhood hosted by Barcelona on Monday. The meeting will also be attended by the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, the European commissioner for neighbourhood policy, Johannes Hahn, EU foreign ministers and their counterparts from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia. The conference forms part of the process to revise the European Union’s neighbourhood policy and marks the start of consultations with the Union’s southern neighbours.
US president Barack Obama said his one-on-one talks with the Cuban leader Raul Castro represent a turning point for in the relationship between the two states, describing the talks as sincere and productive. Held at the Summit of the Americas, this was the first official meeting of US and Cuban leaders in the last 50 years. The US and Cuba decided to normalise ties in December, after decades of Cold War inherited tension. US and Cuba broke off diplomatic relations in 1961, while in 1982, Cuba was on a US State Department list of countries harbouring terrorism, being accused of providing assistance to Marxist insurgency.
The Russian government voiced concern over moves by Finland and Sweden towards closer ties with NATO. According to a joint statement by the defence ministries of the two Nordic states, Russia’s recent behaviour has been the most serious challenge to European security and northern Europe must prepare for a possible crisis. Sweden and Russia’s neighbour Finland are not part of NATO, but have consolidated cooperation with the Alliance.
Romanian weightlifter Florin Ionut Croitoru won a silver medal in the clean and jerk discipline of the men’s 62 kg category and a bronze in the overall ranking at the European Weightlifting Championships hosted by Tbilisi, Georgia. The Bulgarian weightlifter Valentin Hristov won the gold. Romania had already won a medal on Saturday, on the first day of the competition, when Monica Csengeri won the bronze in the 48 kg category in the clean and jerk discipline.
