Newsflash 17 June 2013
For a roundup of domestic and international news click here
Ştefan Stoica, 17.06.2013, 15:04
Romania’s Higher Defense Council meets on Monday in Bucharest to discuss the plan for supplying the Romanian armed forces with materiel for the 2013-2022 period. Another topic on the agenda is Romania’s participation to missions and operations abroad in 2014. Other subjects under discussion are major territorial infrastructure objectives crucial to the national defense system, and the report on the activity of the center for reaction to cybersecurity incidents.
Northern Ireland hosts the two day G8 summit gathering together Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the US and the UK. The main topic on the agenda is the conflict in Syria. Late last month, the EU has decided to lift the embargo on weapon supplies for rebel forces, a decision criticized by Russia, which supports the regime in Damascus. The US announced it would supply arms to the rebels after claiming there is evidence of use of chemical weapons by the regime. The host of the summit, PM David Cameron, said he was confident that the meeting would create the premises necessary for this conflict to be settled.
In Turkey, protests continue against the conservative government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while the two largest trade unions in the country called for a general strike in protest towards the brutal reaction of security forces. This sparked new international reactions, the most prominent being the call made by the Council of Europe for a stop to the escalating violence. According to a toll presented by the BBC, four people have died and 5,000 have been injured in the three weeks of protests. The protests are aimed at PM Erdogan’s authoritarian rule and his alleged attempt to turn Turkey into an Islamist country.
The secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, is on a visit to Bucharest on Monday. On his agenda are meetings with the head of state, Traian Basescu, and Foreign Minister Titus Corlatean. On Tuesday, Bucharest is visited by CIA chief John Brennan. According to President Basescu, the talks will include the monitoring of emails by US secret services aimed at a number of Romanian citizens.
The Eurostat, EU’s office for statistics, announced Romania now holds first place in the Union in terms of growth in hourly wages. In the EU overall, hourly wagest went up 1.9%, with falling figures in Slovenia, Spain and Cyprus. The cost of wages is calculated taking into account salary, financial compensation and non-salary expenses incurred by the employer.
