February 16, 2014
A roundup of domestic and international news
România Internațional, 16.02.2014, 13:20
The Constitutional Court of Romania continues to analyse the Constitution revision bill drafted by a special parliamentary commission. The talks started on Friday, and over 100 articles have been already discussed. The Court president, Augustin Zegrean, said at least ten of the articles analysed by the judges are against the Constitution, and the Court would suggest that Parliament rewrote some of the articles. The Constitutional Court judges have until Monday to rule whether the current draft is in compliance with the Constitution.
The head of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, Hannes Swoboda, will be on an official visit to Romania on Monday. He will visit the National Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Physics and the Magurele Research Platform, which hosts the largest European laser research project, called Extreme Light Infrastructure – Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP). Swoboda will have meetings with Romanian officials and representatives of the Romanian academic and research community, and will take part in a roundtable called “Social Solidarity and Opportunities for Inclusive Romania,” part of a series entitled “Relaunching Europe”.
At least 12 people died and hundreds of thousands of families faced power shortages further to massive snowfalls in eastern Japan and capital Tokyo over the past two days. Air and land transport has been severely disrupted. In the USA as well, the heavy snowfalls and strong wind killed at least 20 people, and thousands of flights were cancelled or delayed. Bad weather also affected Europe. In the UK, Ireland and France at least three people died, tens of thousands of homes are still without power, while the wind and floods disrupted the railway and road transport. In Portugal flights have been cancelled and tens of mountain trails were closed because of the strong wind and snowfalls.
Black Coal, Thin Ice, a noir drama by the Chinese director Yinan Diao, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. The lead actor Liao Fan, won the Silver Bear for best actor. The best actress award was given to the Japanese Haru Kuroki for her part in The Little House by veteran Yoji Yamada. Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel picked up the Grand Jury Prize. The Romanian film industry, rewarded last year with the Golden Bear for Călin Peter Netzer’s Child Pose, was represented this year in the Forum section by Corneliu Porumboiu’s Second Game, while actress Cosmina Stratan took part in the “Shooting Stars” programme alongside other European actors.
The best Romanian tennis player at present, Simona Halep, aged 22, is playing today the final of the WTA tournament in Doha (Qatar), with 2.4 million US dollars in total prize money, against German Angelique Kerber (no. 9 WTA). It is the 10th WTA final for Simona Halep, after she won 6 tournaments in 2013.
