October 19, 2014 UPDATE
A roundup of local and international news.
România Internațional, 19.10.2014, 18:43
Distinguished personalities from political and economic sectors come together in Bucharest for the EU Southeast Europe summit entitled On the Road to Stability and Growth organised by The Economist. The summit starts on Monday with its political section, with the president of the Socialist International and Greece’s former prime minister George Papandreou and the former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta opening the events. The second day of the summit focuses on economic issues and will start with a look at the region’s weaknesses, advantages and prospects.
A procession with a relic of St John Paul II was held on Sunday in Bucharest by the Roman-Catholic Archbishopric. Proclaimed a saint on the 27th of April this year, John Paul II has his feast day in the Catholic calendar on the 22nd of October. Pope John Paul II visited Romania in 1999, his being the first trip by a pontiff to a majority Orthodox country. Also on Sunday, Pope Paul VI, who led the Catholic Church between 1963 and 1978, during a troubled period on the international scene, was beatified by Pope Francis at the Vatican in the presence of the former pontiff Benedict XVI. Paul VI was the first pope to visit all six continents.
Romania’s foreign minister Titus Corlatean will attend on Monday a meeting of EU’s External Affairs Council alongside his counterparts from other EU states. Talks focus on the Ebola epidemic, the developments in Iraq and Syria, the situation in Ukraine and the peace process in the Middle East. On the sidelines of the meeting, Titus Corlatean will attend a dinner given by the Italian presidency of the European Council to mark the end of Catherine Ashton’s term as EU foreign policy chief.
The Romanian tennis player Irina Begu lost in three sets to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia in the final of an ATP tennis tournament in Moscow worth some 700,000 dollars in prize money. Begu and Pavlyuchenkova only met once before, in the quarterfinals of the Seoul tournament last year, which the Russian player won in straight sets. The defending champion in Moscow is another Romanian player, Simona Halep, currently ranked third in the world. She is in Singapore for the Tournament of Champions, which brings together the 8 best-placed players in the world. Halep is the third Romanian player to compete in this tournament, after Virginia Ruzici in 1983 and 1984 and Irina Spirlea in 1998.
Volodimir and Olena Sitnikov, from Kiev, the winners of RRI’s competition “Together for 20 Years”, are in Maramures, northern Romania. They won an 8-day trip to this region as part of a competition run by RRI together with the Union of Ethnic Ukrainians in Romania to celebrate 20 years of broadcasting in the Ukrainian language. The two listeners from Kiev are staying at the Maria guesthouse in the village of Sapanta, the home of the famous Merry Cemetery. They are taken on a tour of the most important tourist sites in Maramures, where there is large community of ethnic Ukrainians.
Philippe Sonnet of Belgium, a listener of our French language service, and Cynthia Marie Rozewicz have arrived in Romania for a 9-day trip in Prahova county. They are the winners of the competition “From the Wine Road to the Princes’ Road” held together with the Prahova County Council. The two visitors will be the guests of the Cumpatu Hotel in Sinaia and Cautis Hotel in Azuga, two well-known mountain resorts in southern Romania. They will be visiting the most important tourist, historical, cultural, ethnographic and wine growing landmarks in Prahova. Juan Antonio and Alejandra del Carmen Casillas Ascencio of Mexico were the initial winners of the competition, but they were unable to visit because of personal reasons.
