\n
<\/p>\n
VACCINE. A new tranche of 200,000 dozes of Pfizer Covid-19
\nvaccine has arrived in Romania today. According to the National Committee for
\nthe Coordination of Vaccination Activities, the total doses administered so
\nfar, to more than 800 thousand people, exceeds 1.3 million. The Minister of
\nEducation, Sorin C\u00eempeanu, has stated that approximately 60,000 people employed
\nin the education system want to be vaccinated against COVID-19 next week.
\nAccording to the minister, in a first phase, the teaching staff from primary,
\nsecondary, high school and university education benefit from priority vaccination
\nin mobile centers. He has stated that more than 200,000 employees in the education
\nsystem have expressed their readiness for vaccination. 42,000 have already been
\nvaccinated. In another development, about 1,600 new cases of coronavirus have
\nbeen reported today. In total, since the beginning of the pandemic in Romania,
\nabout a year ago, over 780,000 cases of infection have been registered in this
\ncountry.<\/p>\n
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BUDGET. The Romanian Liberal Prime Minister Florin C\u00ee\u0163u
\nhas announced that the draft state and social insurance budgets are to reach
\nParliament today, after being amended by
\nthe Legislative Council. He has expressed hope that parliament will adopt the
\ndocument as soon as possible and said that, as far as he knows, the
\nrepresentatives of the PNL – USR PLUS UDMR coalition will not table amendments.
\nRegarding the amendments requested by the Social Democratic opposition, the
\nhead of the Government considers that they could take Romania out of the
\nEuropean Union. According to Florin C\u00ee\u0163u, the budgetary impact would stand at
\n6% and would lead the deficit to 13 percent of the Gross Domestic Product,
\nwhich is not possible. The projected deficit is 7.1% of the GDP. In another
\nmove, the first vice-president of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Sorin
\nGrindeanu, has stated that the Social Democrats will submit a simple motion
\nagainst the Minister of Economy, Claudiu N\u0103sui, after the debate and approval
\nof the budget. He is accused of blocking a \u20ac 500 million funding program.<\/p>\n
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\n
\n
\n
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EU. The Romanian Foreign Minister, Bogdan Aurescu, is
\nattending in Brussels a meeting with his counterparts from the member states of
\nthe European Union, on the relations with Moscow. According to the Romanian
\nForeign Ministry, he will stress that the EU-Russia relations are at a turning
\npoint, as well as the need for European unity, in order to maintain the Union’s
\ncredibility as a foreign policy actor. Following the expulsion of three
\nEuropean diplomats from Russia this month, just as EU foreign policy chief
\nJosep Borell was on a visit there, Minister Aurescu will call for new
\nrestrictive measures against Moscow and will emphasize the need for stronger
\npolitical engagement with ex-Soviet states from the Eastern Partnership, including
\nthe Republic of Moldova (mostly Romanian-speaking). Before the meeting, Aurescu
\nwill participate, together with European counterparts, in an informal meeting
\nwith representatives of the team of Russian opponent Alexei Navalny. On
\nSaturday, Navalny, listed as the Kremlin’s main political opponent, received
\ntwo sentences in a single day: two and a half years in prison, in a fraud case,
\nwhich he says was politically fabricated, and a 9,500 euro fine, on charges of
\ndefaming a supporter of President Vladimir Putin, a nonagenarian veteran of the
\nSoviet army in World War II.<\/p>\n
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\n
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PROTESTS. Union protests continue in Romania this week.
\nSome of the miners stranded underground for several days in Lupeni (southwest)
\nannounce that they will go on hunger strike if they do not receive their
\nsalaries and other outstanding benefits. In this regard, a new round of
\nmeetings is taking place today at the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of
\nLabor. The approximately 70 miners who are protesting underground in the Lupeni
\nmine, some of them on the fifth day, have received water and food from the Red
\nCross and other organizations, and their health is being monitored by mine
\nrescuers. The protesters are dissatisfied with the delay in wages for the
\ncurrent month and the fact that they have not received for almost 10 months
\nsome rights provided in the collective labor agreement, such as heating
\nallowance, transport money and meal vouchers. Also, dissatisfied with salaries
\nand the allocation of funds, the unions in the Penitentiary Police have
\nannounced a rally in front of the
\nheadquarters of the Ministry of Justice today, followed by other protest
\nactions in the following days. <\/p>\n
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\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
INVESTIGATION. An
\ninvestigation is underway at the Marius Nasta Institute in Bucharest,
\nfollowing the incident on Sunday evening, when the air conditioning
\ninstallation of the mobile unit for treating patients with COVID-19 started
\nsmoking heavily. The intervention teams acted quickly and closed the unit, and
\nthe patients were moved to the hospital building. No one was injured. The
\nMinister of Health, Vlad Voiculescu, claims that it was a minor incident. The
\nevent followed another one, in January, also in Bucharest, when a fire broke
\nout at the Matei Bal\u015f National Institute of Infectious Diseases.
\nSeveral halls burned and the whole building was affected by smoke. A similar
\ntragedy took place in November, at the emergency hospital in Piatra Neam\u0163
\n(northeast). Both fires resulted in numerous casualties.<\/p>\n
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ARMY. The main equipment of the first High Mobility
\nArtillery Rocket System (HIMARS), which will be part of the Romanian Army, will
\nbe transported to the headquarters of the 81st Missile Battalion Maior
\nGheorghe \u015eon\u0163u in Focsani (southeast). This is the first unit of the
\nRomanian Land Forces that will have this system. The first elements arrived, at
\nthe end of last week, in the Black Sea Port of Constanta. They will be
\ntransported on land under the coordination of US and Romanian specialized
\nstructures. Romania bought two years ago, from the American company Lockheed
\nMartin, three artillery systems based on HIMARS surface-to-ground rockets, at
\nthe price of about 1.5 billion dollars. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
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TENNIS. Romanian tennis player Simona Halep went down to
\nthird place in the world ranking of professional tennis players (WTA),
\npublished today. The second position is now held by the Japanese Naomi Osaka,
\nwho won the title at the Australian Open on Saturday. We recall that Halep stopped in the quarterfinals of the
\nfirst grand slam tournament of the year. The Australian Ashleigh Barty remains
\nthe WTA leader. Romania has 4 more representatives in the top 100: Patricia
\n\u0162ig, Sorana C\u00eerstea, Irina Begu and Ana Bogdan. (M.I)<\/p><\/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":[28963,29547,35374,33160,35856,28900,32402],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-104930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsflash","tag-bogdan-aurescu","tag-budget","tag-covid-19","tag-himars","tag-pfizer","tag-simona-halep","tag-vaccine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n