DRILL Sea Shield 2019, a military drill involving the
\nparticipation of more than two thousand servicemen from six countries, is
\nunderway in Constanta, Romania’s main Black Sea port. Participants will these
\ndays be training in order to be able to respond to various types of attacks, coming
\nfrom submarines, battleships or warplanes in the Black Sea. According to
\nVice-admiral Alexandru M\u00eer\u015fu, the Romanian Navy Chief of Staff, the structure
\ncoordinating the exercise, the drill’s scenario is a fictional one being by no
\nmeans provocative. NATO has beefed up its presence in the Black Sea from 80 to
\n120 days per year and the NATO Mine Countermeasures Group made up of ships from
\nthe Netherlands, Canada, Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania is proof of the
\nAlliance’s commitment to protecting the eastern flank, preventing conflicts and
\nkeeping peace in the region. <\/p>\n
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SPORT As of today until April 14th
\nover 600 athletes from 40 countries are attending the European Wrestling
\nChampionships in Bucharest, a competition where Romania is represented by 30
\nathletes. Romania has hosted the aforementioned competition for the second time
\nnow, after the 1979 edition. Athletes from Romania walked away with five medals
\nfrom the European Championships in 2018: one gold, one silver and three bronze.
\nRomanian Elena Andries has won three gold medals, in the jerk, snatch and total
\nevents of the European Weightlifting Championships in Batumi, Georgia. Cosmina
\nPana and Cristian Marian Luca, also from the Romanian delegation have won two
\nbronze medals in the jerk and snatch events of the same competition. 14
\nathletes from Romania are participating in the Batumi competition, which offers
\npoints for qualification for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. <\/p>\n
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VOTE The Senate in Bucharest is today debating the simple motion
\ntabled by the opposition National Liberal Party and Save Romania Union against
\nJustice Minister Tudorel Toader. The document signatories say the tensions that
\nare facing the legal system would be defused by the sacking of the current
\njustice minister. Another argument is the latest amendments to the Penal and
\nPenal Procedure Codes through emergency ordinance is impacting Romania’s legal
\nsystem running against the recommendations of the European institutions. On March
\n20th, the Chamber of Deputies rejected another simple motion
\nagainst the Justice Minister. <\/p>\n
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NARCOTICS Several cocaine packages have
\nwashed up on the Romanian shore in tourist resorts. They are the remnants of a
\ntransport evaluated to weigh around a ton, carried by a boat that capsized two
\nweeks ago around the town of Tulcea. Since then, hundreds of gendarmes and
\npolice divers assisted by prosecutors have swept 90 km of Romanian coastline.
\nThe police, continuing the search for suspect material washing up on the beach,
\ncalled on people to announce the authorities when finding such packages without
\ntampering with them. The police said that the drugs are highly concentrated and
\ndangerous if consumed. Organized crime prosecutors claim that the cocaine
\ncapture has a market value estimated at 300 million Euro. So far, 131 kilograms
\nof drugs have been recovered. <\/p>\n
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FILE Romania’s chief prosecutor,
\nAugustin Lazar has today announced that the Military Prosecutors’ Department
\nhas submitted to court the indictment in the file of the anticommunist
\nrevolution of 1989. The file has over three thousand pages, the prosecutor added
\napologizing for the excessively long inquiry period of nearly 30 years. The
\ncountry’s former leftist president, Ion Iliescu, and Deputy Prime Minister Gelu
\nVoican have been placed under criminal investigation in this file for crimes
\nagainst humanity committed upon the demise of the communist regime between
\nDecember 22nd and 31st 1989. The aforementioned persons held
\nvarious official positions in the then FSN council, a body that had executive
\nand legislative power at the time. The revolution’s official death toll stays
\nat over one thousand dead and three thousand wounded, mostly after the collapse
\nof the oppressive dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. Romania was the only
\ncountry in eastern and central Europe which passed from a dictatorship to
\ndemocracy through bloodshed. <\/p>\n
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(translated by bill)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Click here for 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":[34650,31953,34651,34652,31952],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-103444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsflash","tag-batumi","tag-lazar","tag-sea","tag-shield","tag-toader"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n