June 18, 2015
Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news
România Internațional, 18.06.2015, 12:00
WTA 3rd-placed, Romanian tennis player Simona Halep today will be playing in the women’s singles and women’s doubles versions of the Birmingham tournament in Great Britain, according to the competition’s site. Favorite number one to winning the tournament Halep will be taking on WTA 92nd-placed Klara Koukalova, a tennis player coming straight from the women’s singles’ eighth finals. In the women’s doubles Halep and Great Britain’s Heather Watson in the first round will be facing the all-Spanish pair made of Anabel Medina Garrigues and Arantxa Parra Santoja. The Birmingham tournament has 731 thousand dollars prize money up for grabs.
Romania’s Foreign Affairs Minister Bogdan Aurescu, currently on a visit to Republic of Moldova is today taking part in the joint meeting of foreign affairs Ministers coming from member states of The Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization, for which Romania will be taking over the rotating presidency. Yesterday Aurescu was received in audience by Moldovan President Nicolai Timofti, and took the opportunity to highlight the importance of Moldova’s political stability as a key prerequisite for the country’s European integration efforts. Also yesterday, Aurescu inaugurated Romania’s Information Center opened at the State University of Comrat, the seat of Gagauzia in the south, which is a region with a predominantly Turkish-speaking population of Christian-Orthodox persuasion. The high-ranking Romanian officials’ visit occurs against the backdrop of the frailty of the pro-Western current government. Following accusations of having forged his baccalaureate diploma, Prime Minister Chiril Gaburici on Friday tendered his resignation.
More than 1,000 military of 25 NATO 25 member states in the Cincu target range located in central Romanian county of Brasov take part in a collective defense exercise. For the first time ever in the history of NATO, as part of the exercise, structures of Allied Joint Force Command will be temporarily deployed to Romania. The exercise will last until later this month and is part of a large-scale NATO operation mobilizing almost 14,000 military along the Alliance’s eastern border. Also, garrisons and target ranges in eastern Romania until June 26 are the venue for a multi-national special Operation Forces exercise ROUSOFEX15. Taking part in the exercise are military from Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Republic of Moldova, Poland the United States of America and Turkey.
The President of Portugal Anibal Cavaco Silva, currently on an official visit to Romania, in Bucharest today will be holding a meeting with Romania’s deputy Prime Minister for national security, Interior Minister Gabriel Oprea. We recall that this past Tuesday Oprea took over Prime Minister Victor Ponta’s responsibilities as regards the Government’s operational management capacity. Oprea stated Romanian and Portuguese relations are excellent. Oprea went on to say that at present, the bilateral trade exchange accounted for 500 million euro. Also today, the President of Portugal has taken part in the opening ceremony of Romania-Portugal Businesspeople Forum in Bucharest. More than 500 companies with Portuguese capital are active in Romania. The President of Portugal yesterday held talks with Romanian president Klaus Johannis. The talks’ agenda included bilateral relations, the joint work within NATO and EU and the national minorities issue.
Finance ministers from Euro Zone countries are meeting in Luxembourg, in an bid to reach a technical agreement with Greece, without which Athens risks to default on its foreign debt. The meeting is considered crucial, in the context in which negotiations broke down between the EU, the IMF and Athens recently, according to the AFP. Greek PM Alexis Tsipras today goes to Russia with a team of ministers, to meet Vladimir Putin. This is the second visit made by Tsipras to Russia within two months. Athens needs 7.2 billion Euro by the end of the month, when the present agreement runs out.
The number of displaced people or refugees emerging because of numerous conflicts around the world has reached an all-time high of 60 million people in 2014, according to an annual report released by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. 51.2 million refugees were reported for 2013, while a decade ago the number of refugees accounted for 37.5 million people. The refugee surge has begun with the 2011 Syrian conflict, which has since been generating the world’s largest-scale population displacement. In 2014, 1,506 asylum seekers submitted their applications in Romania, with the greatest number, 614, of such applications coming from Syrian-born citizens, followed in descending order by Iraqi, Iranian and Palestinian citizens. More than 700 asylum seekers were granted refugee status or another form of protection. Early into 2015 and until late May, 719 such people have been seeking asylum, most of them coming from Syria and Ukraine.
