25 May, 2021

A roundup of local and international news.

Newsroom, 25.05.2021, 13:55

Covid-19. Romania
today records 381 new Covid infections and 63 new related fatalities. 545 Covid
patients are in intensive care. The vaccine roll-out continues across the
country. Over 7.3 million doses have been administered in this country to over 4.1
million people since the start of mass vaccination in December last year, with
3.2 million people being fully vaccinated.

EU-Belarus. The EU leaders meeting in Brussels agreed to seal off the
bloc’s airspace to Belarusian planes as part of sanctions against the regime of
president Alexander Lukashenko, accused of deviating a Ryanair passenger plane
flying from Athens to Vilnius to arrest dissident journalist Roman
Protasevich. The 27 EU leaders also asked airlines to avoid flying over
Belarus, agreed to impose additional sanctions, including of an economic
nature, and called for the immediate release of the journalist and his partner
Sofia Sapega, who is a Russian citizen, both of whom were arrested on Sunday. EU
leaders also asked the International Civil Aviation Organisation to investigate
what they described as an unprecedented and unacceptable incident and called
for the expansion as soon as possible of the list of Belarus officials and
entities targeted by European sanctions. Some 88 persons from Belarus,
including president Alexander Lukashenko, as well as seven entities are already
banned from entering the EU and have their assets frozen for repression against
the opposition and the presidential elections of 2020, which the EU believes
were rigged.

Video. Undated video footage showing
the 26-year-old journalist Roman Protasevich was made public on Monday causing
concern among the opposition, which believes it was recorded under duress. The
opposition media says the journalist had marks on his face suggesting possible
maltreatment. Protasevich is a Belarusian citizen but has been living for a
number of years in Poland and Lithuania. A former editor-in-chief of an
influential opposition media operation called Nexta, based in Poland, he played
a key role in organising the protest movement from 2020. Belarus says the
network is run by western services, mainly the Polish ones, and that it is used
to remove president Lukashenko from power.

Middle East. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken today began his Middle
East tour in Tel Aviv. The US is trying to consolidate the ceasefire agreed on
Friday between Israel and Hamas and to help speed up the supply of humanitarian
aid to the Gaza Strip, which is devastated by clashes. In parallel with
Blinken’s mission, the Israeli authorities said they will allow access to Gaza
for deliveries of fuel, medicine and food. The US official, who will stay in
the region until Thursday, will meet Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian
president Mahmoud Abbas before travelling to Cairo and Amman. On Monday, US
president Joe Biden had talks over the telephone with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel
Fattah el-Sisi and thanked his country for its successful diplomacy in efforts
to end the hostilities between Israel and the Gaza Strip. This was the second
phone conversation between the two in recent days to discuss the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Brexit. EU leaders hailed the entry
into force of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement on 1st May
2021, emphasising that together with the withdrawal agreement, this should be
implemented fully and effectively. Also, the European Council has invited the
European Commission to continue its efforts to ensure full implementation of
the agreements, including in the areas of EU citizens’ rights, fisheries and a
level playing field. The Brexit agreement was intended to protect the
principles of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and maintain an open border
between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland by keeping the latter
inside the EU single market. Relations between London and the EU were seriously
affected by the UK’s decision to leave the European single market, a measure
which officially came into force on 31st January 2020 and which in
effect began to be implemented from the start of this year.

Tennis. Romanian tennis player
Sorana Cîrstea reached the last 16 of the Strasbourg WTA tournament as she
defeated Venus Williams in three sets on Monday evening. This is Cîrstea’s
first win against the American player. She will next face China’s Shuai Zhang,
who is seeded fifth, and who defeated Japan’s Misaki Doi. Cîrstea last played Zhang
in 2008 in Cuneo, in Italy, a match she won. (CM)