December 26, 2014 UPDATE
A roundup of domestic and international news
România Internațional, 26.12.2014, 18:48
The new President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, will pay his first official visit to the neighbouring Republic of Moldova over January 22nd — 23rd, at the invitation of his counterpart Nicolae Timofti. According to the presidential spokesperson Tatiana Niculescu Bran, the Romanian head of state will meet with several officials and will give a lecture a the University of Chisinau. Klaus Iohannis has visited the Moldovan capital as president elect, before taking over the office from Traian Basescu. He then promised that Bucharest would continue to support Moldova’s European efforts and stated he wished Moldova’s accession took place during his term in office.
Europe will become vulnerable unless it takes epidemics seriously and treats them as a matter of national security, just like the US, where the centres for disease prevention and control are quite impressive, warns the Belgian microbiologist Peter Piot in an interview carried by the British daily the Independent. In 1976, Piot was among the first to identify the Ebola virus. According to professor Piot, who is the head of the international task force in charge with coordinating all activities relating to the Ebola epidemics, it’s time Europe had a battalion of properly trained people, with global experience, able to be mobilised in case of necessity. The hemorrhagic fever epidemics has caused over 7 thousand 5 hundred deaths, out of a total of 19 thousand cases reported in the three most affected countries: Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new military doctrine, which states that NATO is a fundamental threat to Russia’s security, the Kremlin announced on Friday. According to the new doctrine, the main foreign threats are the enlargement of NATO’s capabilities and destabilisation in several regions. The document reflects Kremilin’s worries over NATO’s strengthening its capability on the borders with Russia and the measures taken to deploy a global anti-missile defence system in Eastern Europe.
The Asian countries that were hit by a devastating tsunami exactly 10 years ago commemorated the approximately 230 thousand victims, killed by one of the biggest natural disasters in the history of modern mankind. The tsunami hit on December 26th, 2004, and decimated entire communities along the coasts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. Triggered by an earthquake measuring 9.1 on the Richter scale, the gigantic wave in the Indian Ocean killed over 130 thousand people in Indonesia alone.
Over 100,000 people have been evacuated from Malaysia because of the flooding that hit the north of the country, caused by the rain brought by the Monsoon, the heaviest in the last forty years. Foreign tourists, including Romanian, are among the evacuated tourists, who have arrives safely in capital Kuala Lumpur.
Iraq and Turkey have agreed to boost their military cooperation to fight against radical Islamists. Turkey might supply Iraq with armament and train the Iraqi National Guard, the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi announced after the meeting he had in Ankara on Thursday with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu. Meanwhile, Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria have continued their offensive against the Islamic State’s jihadists. Also, in the Syrian town of Alep, moderate Syrian rebel groups, who are fighting both against Bashar al Assad’s armies and against Islamists, have agreed to form an alliance. Reuters reports that the lack of cooperation between the moderate rebels allowed radical movements, such as the Islamic State and the Al Nusra front to grow.
On December 26th, the second day of Christmas, orthodox Christians, who are the majority in Romania, but also Latin Christians, also celebrated the solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God. First held sometime in the 5th century, this feast is one of the oldest to celebrate the Holy Mother. Such feasts are held, according to the Orthodox calendar, after each big celebration that marks a major event in the history of Christianity.
