PROTEST – On Sunday, the
\nRomanian Interior Minister held a press conference concerning the events that
\noccurred during the anti-Government protest on August 10th in
\nBucharest. Carmen Dan apologized to all those who suffered, both civilians and
\nmilitary. The Interior Minister said that she had received the report on the
\nevents and voiced her availability to present the data before Parliament.
\nAccording to the minister, 21 criminal records have been opened, 3 people have
\nbeen arrested and 2 have been placed under judicial control. As regards the
\ntear gas used, Carmen Dan said that the substances used are authorized, have
\ncertificates of conformity and are sold by authorized manufacturers. She also
\nexplained the gendarmes’ violence with the fact that the peaceful protesters
\ndid not disassociated themselves from the violent ones. Until Sunday night, the
\nArmy Prosecutor’s Office in Bucharest had registered approximately 300 criminal
\ncomplaints against gendarmes, filed by participants in the protest. 130 people
\nhave been heard so far. Army prosecutors have initiated criminal proceedings
\nfor abusive behavior and professional misconduct in relation to the
\nintervention of the gendarme forces during the protest. Ionel Corbu, Chief
\nProsecutor of the Army Prosecutor’s Office with the Bucharest Military
\nTribunal, has stated that the aggression displayed was not justified, as there
\nwere other means that could have been used instead. <\/p>\n
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ITALY – The search
\noperation for those missing after the Morandi motorway bridge collapsed in
\nGenoa ended overnight after the last bodies were found, bringing the official
\ndeath toll to 43. Two of the dead are Romanian citizens. We recall that a
\n200-meter section of the bridge gave away in busy traffic on Tuesday, plunging
\nvehicles, concrete and twisted metal to the ground, 50 metres below. The
\nviaduct was part of the A10 motorway and was managed by the private operator
\nAutostrade per l’Italia. The Italian
\ngovernment blames Autostrade for the disaster, though the company denies any
\nnegligence on its part. On Friday, the Government launched a procedure to
\nrevoke the concession agreements with
\nAutostrade, which allow the latter to operate toll roads. <\/p>\n
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DIASPORA – The Romanians who
\nlive and work abroad and spent their summer holidays in the country are now
\ngoing back to work, so border crossing points, especially in the west of the
\ncountry, are extremely crowded. Official data show that, in the past few days,
\nthe Romanian border has been crossed by more than 1,300,000 people, both
\nRomanian and foreign citizens. In another development, Romanian police and its
\nforeign partners discovered some 20,000 people reported in the Schengen
\nInformation System or wanted by INTERPOL in the first six months of the year.
\nAlso, more than 400 wanted by the Romanian authorities at international level
\nwere brought to the country, and more than 360 people wanted by Romania’s
\ninternational partners were handed over to the countries wanting them. <\/p>\n
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CYBER ATTACK – The Romanian
\nIntelligence Service has announced that it possesses intelligence according to
\nwhich large-scale cyber attacks were perpetrated against financial institutions
\nin Romania in the June-August 2018 period. The American banks too had received
\nwarnings from the FBI that certain hackers were prepared to attack ATMs and
\npayment processing devices. The Romanian Intelligence Service has stated that
\nthe hackers use several attack methods, including the Cobalt Strike arsenal,
\nassociated with a cyber-crime group in Eastern Europe. <\/p>\n
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TALKS – The German chancellor
\nAngela Merkel and the Russian President Vladimir Putin have made no real
\nprogress with the talks regarding the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, the relations with
\nIran and the North Stream 2 gas pipeline, the issues that the two officials
\ndiscussed on Saturday night, Reuters reports. The two leaders met in a formal
\nbilateral meeting for the first time since the annexation of Crimea by Russia.
\nAfter the talks, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peksov told the press that no
\nagreement was reached following the discussions held at the Meseberg castle, north
\nof Berlin. He stated that both Merkel and Putin believed the North Stream 2
\nproject was purely commercial, despite opposition from both the US and Ukraine.
\nThe pipeline should be rendered operational in late 2019, and would supply Europe
\nwith Russian natural gas, going round Ukraine. This project, initiated by
\nMoscow, is being implemented despite the EU’s energy strategy to reduce the
\ndependence on gas imported from Russia. <\/p>\n
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TENNIS – The Romanian tennis
\nplayer Simona Halep, world’s no.1, has qualified for the final of the WTA
\ntournament in Cincinnati, Ohio, with approximately 3 million dollars in prize
\nmoney, after defeating on Friday 6-3, 6-4 Arina Sabalenka of Belarus. The
\nRomanian player, who is the tournament’s first seed, will play the final match
\nagainst the Dutch Kiki Bertens, no 17 in the WTA rankings. To Simona, the
\nCincinnati final will be the 33rd in her career, whose record
\nincludes 18 titles won so far. In another move, the pair made up of the
\nRomanian Horia Tecau and the Dutch Jean-Julien Rojer failed to qualify for the
\nfinal of the doubles competition of the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 in
\nCincinnati. They were defeated on Saturday by the British-Brazilian pair Jamie
\nMurray – Bruno Soares. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A roundup of domestic and international news<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":75903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[33867,33871,32048,33870,33869,30410,33868,33357,28900],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-102959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsflash","tag-august-10-protest","tag-cincinanti-tournament","tag-cyber-attack","tag-german-chancellor-angela-merkel","tag-morandi-bridge","tag-romanian-diaspora","tag-romanian-interior-minister-carmen-dan","tag-russian-president-vladimir-putin","tag-simona-halep"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n