August 26, 2024
A roundup of domestic and international news
Newsroom, 26.08.2024, 13:55
Survey – The candidates of the Social Democratic Party – PSD and the National Liberal party – PNL, Marcel Ciolacu and Nicolae Ciucă, would enter the second round of the presidential election in Romania, if elections were held next Sunday – shows a CURS survey published on Sunday. Regarding the parliamentary elections, the PSD leads in the preferences of the electorate, followed by its governing partner, the PNL. The survey, about which we talk in detail after the news, was conducted between August 6-22, on a sample of 1,067 respondents, with a margin of error of plus/minus 3%.
Drought – The Romanian government will discuss, this week, the first set of measures for the farmers affected by the drought. Recently, the agriculture minister Florin Barbu and the farmers’ representatives have had a discussion aimed at granting compensations for the damage caused by the drought and for a new package of measures to combat the effects of the drought, a package that the minister is going to present to the members of the government. The authorities are also considering the creation of a mechanism agreed with the Financial Supervisory Authority for state insurance of an area of about 7 million hectares with an insurance premium of 3,000 lei (600 Euros) for each hectare. The establishment of local irrigation systems and forest curtains is also under discussion.
Weather – Almost all of Romania is under heat wave and severe thermal discomfort alerts, with maximum temperatures rising to 38 degrees Celsius. In the northwest, center-west, partially in the east and south, there is a code yellow alert for heatwave and high thermal discomfort. The temperature-humidity index will exceed the critical threshold of 80 units. The highs of the day will range from 34 to 36 degrees Celsius. In the coming days, the heat wave will subside and the atmospheric instability will increase. A Code Orange alert for hot weather is still in force today in 20 counties from the south, west, east and the city of Bucharest.
Tennis – Three tennis players from Romania are performing today in the inaugural round at the US Open, the last Grand Slam tournament of the year. Coming from the qualifications, Gabriela Ruse will face Julia Grabher from Austria. The other two Romanian players on the singles table are Jaqueline Cristian, who will play against the Russian Daria Kasatkina, seed no. 12, and Ana Bogdan, who will meet the Dutch Arantxa Rus in the first round.
Visa – The US administration is to announce, on October 15, a decision regarding the visa waiver for Romanians, which would apply starting from 2025, Romanian government sources stated. During this period, the Romanian executive is carrying out the “We qualify Romania” campaign, which aims at including the country in the American Visa Waiver program and at exempting it from obtaining travel visas to the US. As part of the campaign, launched on July 18, Bucharest undertook to meet the technical criteria for joining the Visa Waiver by September 30, 2024, the date on which the American fiscal year ends. Among them is a refusal rate below 3% of US B1 and B2 visas for business and tourism granted to Romanian citizens during the fiscal year 2024. In this sense, the government, through the Foreign Ministry, urges as many Romanian citizens as possible to renew their US visa by September 30.
Attack – The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is today going to Solingen, to the scene of the knife attack for which a Syrian, suspected of links with the Islamic State (IS) organization, was arrested, AFP reports. IS claimed responsibility for the attack and pointed out that the attacker acted to avenge Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere. According to the French news agency, Friday evening’s attack, which left three dead and eight injured during local festivities, increases the pressure on the head of government a week before elections in two states of the former communist Democratic Republic of Germany, where the far-right party AfD is well placed to get an unprecedented score. The party accused the successive governments of causing ‘chaos’ by accepting too many immigrants and called for an expulsion offensive. The suspect arrived in the country in December 2022, according to several German media, and was the subject of an expulsion order to Bulgaria, the European Union state where his entry had been registered and where he should have applied for asylum, in accordance with the community rules. In recent years, Germany has been the scene of several jihadist attacks. The one committed with a truck, in December 2016, at a Christmas market in Berlin, killed 12. (LS)
