March 26, 2015 UPDATE
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Roxana Vasile, 26.03.2015, 12:30
35th-seeded Romanian tennis player Irina Begu on Thursday qualified for the third round of the WTA tournament in Miami, Florida with total prizes of 5.3 million dollars. The Romanian defeated Czech Tereza Smitkova 5-7, 6-4, 6-4. In the third round Irina will be facing Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland. The best Romanian tennis player at present, Simona Halep, who is also the world’s third best player, will be facing another Czech opponent, Nicole Vaidisova in the second round on Friday. Last week Halep won the tournament in Indian Wells, the most important in her career. Also on Friday Monica Niculescu from Romania will be playing the competition’s odds-on favourite Serena Williams.
The latest developments in the crash of the Germanwings plane in southeastern France gave the tragedy an incomprehensible dimension that goes beyond any power of imagination, German chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr earlier said there had been no clue about the co-pilot’s reason to deliberately crash the plane into the mountains. Spohr was shocked by the co-pilot’s decision, a 28 year old German with no connection with terror activities. According to French investigators, the co-pilot was left alone in the cockpit for a while when he apparently took some maneuvers aimed at crashing the plane. We recall the Airbus A320 of Lufthansa’s low cost division Germanwings crashed on Tuesday in the French Alps killing all 150 on board. Most of the victims were Germans and Spaniards. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has expressed deep distress over the plane crash.
97 years since the union of Bessarabia with Romania are being celebrated on Friday. On March 27th 1918 the legislature in Chisinau ruled that this Romanian-speaking province, until that time part of the Czarist Russia, unite with Romania. The present ex-soviet Republic of Moldova was set up on the Romanian territories re-annexed by Moscow back in 1940 following an ultimatum by Stalin. Against the background of this celebration, the Romanian minister delegate for the relation with the Romanians abroad, Angel Tilvar is paying a formal visit to the Republic of Moldova. The president of Moldovan Parliament Adrian Candu has also held talks in Bucharest with Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta, Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu and with the presidents of the two Parliament chambers who reiterated their support for the European integration of the Republic of Moldova.
A supreme court in Bucharest on Thursday ruled to place Social-Democratic senator and former Finance Minister Darius Valcov under house arrest. Detained for 24 hours on Wednesday, shortly after the Senate had approved the anti-corruption prosecutors’ request, Valcov is being probed in for influence peddling. He has been accused that back in the time of his term in office as mayor of Slatina, a city in southern Romania, he would have preferentially granted public acquisition contracts for a kickback of 2 million euros. Anti-corruption prosecutors on Thursday also detained National Liberal MP Theodor Nicolescu for bribe taking and abuse of office in a file involving over-evaluated real estate.
