In Romania,
\ndrought has affected large surface areas covered by farming land and damaged at
\nleast a quarter of this year’s crops, the president of the League of
\nAgricultural Producers Associations, Laurentiu Baciu, told Radio Romania. He
\nsaid drought caused most damage to the corn production, as well as the
\nsunflower and soybean crops. Producers have help from the authorities, but for
\nthe moment they were only promised aid for small-scale crops. In the case of
\nlarge crops, the agriculture ministry needs to come up with more comprehensive
\nfunding schemes, which require the approval of the European Union.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Romania, together with Germany
\nand Bulgaria, proposed a revised Black Sea strategy that may constitute a first
\nstep towards creating a European Union Black Sea strategy, said Romania’s
\nforeign minister Bogdan Aurescu. In an interview to Realitatea TV channel on
\nSaturday, he said Romania also proposed the creation of a new strategy to
\napproach NATO’s eastern and southern partners in the run up to the NATO summit
\nin Warsaw in 2016. Aurescu also said that Romania is not a target for Russia
\nbecause the former is a member of NATO and an attack on Romania is tantamount
\nto an attack against NATO.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The US Secretary of State John Kerry said after talks with his Egyptian
\ncounterpart Sameh Choukri in Cairo on Sunday that if implemented, the nuclear
\nagreement with Iran would make the Middle East safer. After Egypt, Kerry
\ntravels to Doha, where he is due to meet his counterparts from six Sunni
\nmonarchies in the Gulf area worried about the nuclear agreement with Iran.
\nKerry’s tour ends on August 8th and also takes him to South-East
\nAsia.<\/p>\n
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\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The situation of the Tartar population in the Crimean Peninsula, which
\nwas annexed by Russia last year, was the main topic of the World Congress of
\nTartars held in Ankara, Turkey. Around 500 delegations of Tartar organisations
\nfrom across the world, including Romania, attended the congress. They called on
\nthe international community to step in and put an end to Russia’s undemocratic
\nactions against the ethnic Tartars in Crimea. The representatives of the
\nDemocratic Union of Muslim Tartars in Romania reiterated their support for
\nfinding a solution to the problems faced by the Tartars in Crimea. Most of
\nRomania’s 25,000 Tartars live in Dobruja, in the south-east, a province that
\nwas under Ottoman rule for hundreds of years. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The European Commission supports
\nthe resolution of the European Parliament on the recognition of the genocide
\nagainst the Roma during World War Two and the establishment of a Roma Holocaust
\nMemorial Day in Europe on the 2nd of August. Romania’s prime
\nminister Victor Ponta said his government welcomes the initiative of the Roma
\ncivil society in Romania to commemorate together this tragic event in world
\nhistory and urged all Romanian citizens to observe a minute’s silence for the
\nvictims. On the 2nd of August 1944, almost 3,000 Roma men, women and
\nchildren from the concentration camp in Auschwitz were sent to the gas chambers
\nby the Nazis. The Roma are the biggest ethnic minority in Europe.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\nThe Romanian tennis player Patricia Maria Tig,
\nno. 154 in the world, on Sunday lost the final of the tennis tournament in
\nBaku, Azerbaijan, worth 226,000 dollars. She was defeated by Russia’s Margarita
\nGasparian, world no. 112, in three sets, 6-3, 5-7, 6-0. The qualification for
\nthe final in Baku is the Romanian player’s best result yet. Tig and Gasparian
\nfaced each other only once before in a match won by Gasparian in 2015 in
\nFrance. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A roundup of local and international news<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":100004,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[28877],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-100378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsflash","tag-newsflash"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n