September 26, 2014 UPDATE
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România Internațional, 26.09.2014, 19:42
On Friday the National Anti-corruption Directorate asked for the approval of the Presidency, the Parliament of Romania and the European Parliament for the prosecution of 9 former ministers in 3 governments of Romania between 2000 and 2012, in a case involving procurement contracts with Microsoft for the national digitised educational system. The 9 ex-ministers are suspected of bribe taking, misuse of authority, abuse of office and money laundering. One of them, Dan Nica, is currently an MEP, and three others are members of the Romanian Parliament.
The Romanian PM Victor Ponta had a meeting in Houston on Friday with Jeff Miller, president of Halliburton, one of the world’s largest providers of products and services for the energy industry. Ponta encouraged Halliburton to regard Romania as a regional operations centre for South East Europe and the eastern neighbourhood. Also on Friday, the PM discussed with Mark W. Albers, vice-president of ExxonMobil. Ponta expressed Bucharest’s interest in stimulating investments in the oil and natural gas sector.
Kiev and Moscow have reached a preliminary agreement on the resumption of Russian natural gas deliveries to Ukraine, to end a crisis that jeopardises Europe’s natural gas supplies for the winter. The announcement was made on Friday by the European Commissioner for Energy, Gunther Oettinger, after talks in Berlin with Russian and Ukrainian officials. Under the deal, Russia is to supply at least 5 billion cubic metres of natural gas to Ukraine in the coming weeks, paid in advance by Ukraine. In exchange, Ukraine agreed to pay 3.1 billion US dollars to Russia by year end. A new EU-Russia-Ukraine meeting on this topic is scheduled for next week in Berlin.
The British Parliament Friday authorised air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq. Also on Friday, Denmark announced it would send sever fighter planes in Iraq, to support the international coalition headed by the US against the Islamic State group. The French Presidency announced it would strengthen its support for the Syrian opposition forces fighting against the Jihadist groups.
