November 6, 2016

Four people were killed and almost 60 injured in a chain collision on Saturday morning on the Bucharest-Constanta motorway.

Newsroom, 06.11.2016, 13:47

Chain collision. According to the latest toll, four people
were killed and almost 60 injured in a chain collision caused by fog that
occurred on Saturday morning on the motorway linking Bucharest to the Black Sea
port of Constanta, in the south-east. More than 20 of the people injured,
including 7 in serious condition, are still undergoing treatment at hospitals
in Bucharest. Around 30 vehicles, including 2 buses, were involved in the
collision.

Trade expansion. A centre for dialogue and cooperation in
the field of energy will be established next year in Bucharest, the Romanian
prime minister Dacian Ciolos said in the Latvian capital Riga at a meeting of
heads of government from Central and Eastern Europe and China. The Chinese
prime minister Li Keqiang
made a number of proposals to expand cooperation with the states in the region.
Romania is interested in continuing trade exchanges with China, said Romania’s
prime minister, adding that his government is waiting for the Chinese side to
give concrete signals with regard to the access of Romanian agri-food products
on the Chinese market. This would involve the development and diversification
of the export of meet and meet products, given that only one single Romanian
producer is present on the Chinese market at the moment. Romania is also
interested in developing its relationship with China in the area of tourism and
there is an opportunity in the near future to introduce charter flights between
Bucharest and China, prime minister Dacian Ciolos also said.

Diaspora. The pilot stage of a project entitled Digital
Diaspora – A Partnership for Building Efficient and Transparent Cooperation has
been launched in Madrid in the presence of the minister delegate for relations
with Romanians abroad, Maria Ligor. The project’s main goal is to improve the
quality and efficiency of digital communication between diplomatic missions and
Romanian communities abroad. In its pilot stage, the project will be
implemented in five Romanian diplomatic missions and will include training
courses given by digital communication experts aimed at identifying the
problems and opportunities in the area of online communication with respect to
the Romanian diaspora and find specific solutions to address and tap into them,
respectively. The project’s pilot stage comes to an end in October 2017 and is
carried out at Romania’s diplomatic missions in Spain, Italy, Belgium, Canada
and Australia.

Bulgaria elections. Bulgarian voters are today electing
their president from among 21 candidates who are in the race. Parliament
speaker Tsetska
Tsacheva, the candidate of the ruling Bulgaria, and the candidate of the Socialist opposition and
former Bulgarian Air Force commander, general Rumen Radev, are the
favourites. According to opinion polls, Tsacheva may win the first
round, but lose in the second to Radev, who has campaigned for closer
ties with Russia. Radio Romania’s correspondent in Sofia notes that the
presidential elections are seen as a vote of confidence for prime minister Boyko Borisov who promised to
resign if his candidate doesn’t have the highest score in the first round.
Alongside the presidential elections, a referendum is also held on a number of
electoral changes, which has been largely ignored by the politicians and the
media during the election campaign.

Handball. The Romanian men’s handball team today face
Poland in qualifying Group 2 ahead of the European Championships of 2018. In
their first match, Romania defeated Belarus 26:23. Their group also includes
Serbia. In other news from handball, the Romanian champions and Champions
League titleholders CSM Bucharest on Friday in Budapest lost to the Hungarian
side Gyor, 33:25. This is CSM’s third consecutive defeat in the Champions
League preliminary groups. CSM now have only 2 points from their only win so
far, against the Russian side Rostov Don and are on the third position in the
group, after Gyor and Rostov and ahead of the Danish side Midtjylland. The
three best-ranked teams in each group advance to the main round.