COVID-19 – The Group
\nfor Strategic Communication on Monday announced some 52 people are being
\nquarantined in institutional centers while over 8,000 are under house
\nmonitoring. So far 3 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, of whom one
\nperson has recovered, and the other two are in good health. On the other hand,
\nthe global death toll of the coronavirus has exceeded 3,000 with 80,000 being
\ninfected worldwide, mostly in China, where the number of victims is constantly decreasing.
\nSouth Korea and Italy are of particular concern right now, reporting dozens of
\ndeaths. In Italy 500 new infections were reported in a single day. Several
\nmajor events at European level have been canceled.<\/p>\n
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GOVERNMENT – The Liberals are today
\nstarting negotiations with parliamentary parties with a view to forming a new
\nmajority that would support the investiture of Florin Citu’s Cabinet. The
\nSocial-Democrats in opposition have criticized Florin Citu and accused the
\nLiberals of continuing to support the idea of early elections. The Save Romania
\nUnion will make a decision depending on how negotiations unfold and on the
\nstrict observance of their own priorities, namely the election of mayors in two
\nrounds. The Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians has warned that any
\nnegotiation made after the presentation of the list of Ministers and the
\ngoverning program is bound to fail. The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats
\nclaims the Liberals have presented the list of Ministers to ensure the new
\nCabinet is rejected by Parliament, while the People’s Movement Party says a
\nLiberal Government supported by a minority in Parliament is unlikely to be
\ninvested. Florin C\u00ee\u0163u’s nomination by president Klaus Iohannis came after the
\nConstitutional Court ruled as unconstitutional the president’s first choice,
\nthe interim prime minister and leader of the National Liberal Party Ludovic
\nOrban. The latter’s government had been dismissed through a vote of
\nno-confidence at the beginning of February.<\/p>\n
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INVESTIGATION -
\nThe head of the Maramures County Council and the president of the
\nSocial-Democratic branch in Maramures, Gabriel Zetea, announced he would be
\nappointing today an interim manager of the Emergency County Hospital after its
\nmanager and former Health Minister Sorina Pintea was arrested. Zetea wants to
\nexclude Pintea from the Social-Democratic Party along with anyone who might be
\ninvolved in the investigation, pending the end of the trial. Pintea was placed
\nunder pre-trial arrest for 30 days for aggravated bribe taking. According to
\nanticorruption prosecutors, Pintea received 10,000 euros and the equivalent in
\nlei of around 25,000 euros between December 2019 and February 2020 from a
\ncompany, via an intermediary, accounting for 7% of the value of a contract
\nsigned with that company to carry out rehabilitation works at a medical unit.<\/p>\n
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POLLUTION – The
\nlatest spike in pollution levels reported in Bucharest was caused by a number
\nof factors, such as uncontrolled vegetation fires and a fire, but the air
\nquality is currently showing signs of returning to normal parameters, Romania’s
\nEnvironment Minister told a press conference on Monday. National and private
\nnetworks for monitoring air quality on Sunday night and Monday morning reported
\nrecord-high pollution levels, exceeding the legal threshold by over 1,000%.
\nRomania was supposed to submit by April 1, 2019 all national programs aimed at
\ncontrolling pollution to the European Commission. For its failure to do so, the
\nEuropean Commission has launched infringement procedures against Romania. <\/p>\n
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EUROVISION – Roxen will be representing
\nRomania in the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Alcohol You. The
\nsong won Sunday’s national selection contest. The jury picked the song out of a
\ntotal of five songs that were selected for the final, each having prepared a
\nspecial show. The 2020 Eurovision Song Contest will be hosted by Rotterdam, the
\nNetherlands, under the slogan Open Up. The semi-finals will take place on May
\n12 and 14, and the final on May 16. A total of 26 countries will take part in
\nthe contest. Last year’s winner was Duncan Laurence, the representative of the
\nNetherlands, with his song Arcade. Romania’s best performance in the
\nEurovision Song Contest was third place, which it obtained twice, in 2005 in
\nKiev, with Let Me Try, performed by Luminita Anghel and Sistem, and in 2010
\nin Oslo with Playing with Fire, performed by Paula Seling and Ovi.<\/p>\n
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(Translated
\nby V. Palcu) <\/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":[33044,35374,29053,31985,35391,35254,35399,33333],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-104182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsflash","tag-air-pollution","tag-covid-19","tag-european-commission","tag-eurovision-song-contest","tag-florin-citu","tag-liberal-government","tag-quarantine-and-house-monitoring","tag-sorina-pintea"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n