December 15, 2015

The death toll of the “Colectiv nightclub tragedy has risen to 62/ Ceremonies are being held today to mark 26 years since the flame of the Anti-Communist Revolution of December 1989 was kindled in the Western Romanian city of Timisoara

Newsroom, 15.12.2015, 12:00

COLECTIV — The death toll of the tragedy which struck the “Colectiv” nightclub in Bucharest on October 30, has risen to 62, after another person who sustained burn injuries died in a hospital in Bucharest. Some 40 people are still undergoing treatment in hospitals in Bucharest and abroad. The Romanian Health Ministry is now looking into the possibility of building a new burns hospital in Bucharest. In the same line, three burns centres will be built in Iasi (north-east), Targu Mures (centre) and Timisoara (west), under a program with the World Bank.

COMMEMORATION — Ceremonies are being held today to mark 26 years since the flame of the Anti-Communist Revolution of December 1989 was kindled in the Western Romanian city of Timisoara. A symposium devoted to controversial aspects of the events that occurred in 1989 is scheduled for today. Attending the debates will be both historians and revolutionaries. Started on December 16, 1989, by the Timisoara inhabitants’ opposition to an abusive measure taken by the local authorities, the Revolution spread to the whole country at a fast pace. It culminated on December 22, when dictator Nicolae Ceausescu fled Bucharest, leaving power. Over 1,000 people died and some 3,400 others got injured between December 16 and 25, 1989. Romania was the only country in the former Eastern Bloc that violently overthrew the communist regime and executed its communist leaders.

DIPLOMACY — US Secretary of State, John Kerry, is holding talks in Moscow today with Russian President Vladimir Putin on ways to put an end to the civil war that has been ravaging Syria for almost four years now. The US has announced that, on December 18, New York will be the venue for the future meeting of the International Syria Support Group, adding that it counts on Russia to bring Syrian president Bashar al-Assad at the negotiation table with the Syrian opposition. Over 250,000 people died and million others have fled civil war, which has been ravaging Syria since as early as 2011. News agencies underline that the US Secretary of State paid his latest visit to Moscow in May, for talks with president Vladimir Putin and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on the Ukraine crisis.

REFUGEES — Multiculturalism continues to be an “illusion”, being conducive to the emergence of “parallel societies”, German chancellor, Angela Merkel told a meeting of her Christian Democratic Union party, yesterday. Merkel presented the guidelines of her policy on refugees, evoking “humanitarian imperatives” , but she accepted a compromise with the critical voices, by promising to reduce the number of asylum-seekers in Germany, Reuters and France Presse news agencies report. She also stood for the complete integration of non-EU citizens by their embracing of the German language and values. Thus, the German chancellor believes multiculturalism risks to generate political isolation, and the emergence of suburbs just like those on the outskirts of Paris, with alienated individuals and where the crime rate is very high. Some one million non-EU citizens arrived in Germany in 2015, against the backdrop of the flexible policies pursued by the government led by Angela Merkel.

ECONOMY– Foreign direct investments in Romania increased by 270 million Euros in October, exceeding 2.8 billion Euros in the first ten months of the year. The figure has exceeded by almost 1.2 billion Euros the amount registered in the same period of 2014. According to the National Bank of Romania, capital participations, including the estimated reinvested net profit, stood at 2.7 billion Euros.

TOURISM INDUSTRY–Some 1.75 million foreign tourists visited Romania in the first nine months of the year, spending here approximately one billion Euros. According to the National Institute for Statistics, most non-resident tourists came to Romania on business, they were followed by those who participated in congresses, conferences, fairs and exhibitions or attended courses and by holiday makers. Approximately half of the tourists who arrived in Romania in the first nine months of the year had their stays organised by a travel agency, and over 28% made their travel plans by themselves. The main means of transportation was the plane.

SPORTS — The Romanian national women’s handball team on Wednesday will be taking on the host country’s national squad, in a fixture counting towards the quarter-finals of the World Handball Championship, underway in Denmark. In the three other fixtures at this stage of the competition, France is pitted against the Netherlands, Poland will be taking on Russia, while Norway will go against Montenegro. Whereas Poland grabbed a surprising win over Hungary in the eighth finals, Romania will have to earn at least the 7th position in the final rankings in order to make headway into next year’s pre-Olympic tournaments in Rio. Romania is the only country to have participated in all final tournaments of the World Championships, since 1957, boasting three medals: gold in 1962 and silver in 1973 and 2005, respectively.

(Translated by: Diana Vijeu)