July 1, 2014 UPDATE
A roundup of domestic and international news.
România Internațional, 01.07.2014, 12:03
The mayor of the eastern Romanian town of Bacau, the Liberal Romeo Stavarache and two of his alleged accomplices were detained for 30 days on Tuesday, on corruption charges. Also on Tuesday, Mante Andras Levente, a parliamentarian with the Hungarian Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania (UDMR), received a suspended sentence of six month in jail for conflict of interests. In another development, the Bucharest Court of Appeal decided to extend the distraint on Dan Voiculescu’s property and on that of some of his accomplices. Dan Voiculescu, the founder of the Conservative Party, was prosecuted in 2008 for the fraudulent privatization of the Food Research Institute in Bucharest which caused a 60-million euro damage to the state.
Romanian MEPs, Liberal Adina Valean and Social Democrat Corina Cretu, respectively, were elected, on Tuesday in Strasbourg, vice presidents of the European Parliament. Also on Tuesday Italy took over from Greece the EU’s rotating presidency for six months, against the delicate background of the crisis in Ukraine, news agencies report. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has said that among the top priorities of the Italian EU presidency are economic recovery, creation of jobs and curbing illegal migration. In another development, the German Social Democrat MEP Martin Schulz was elected, on Tuesday, head of the European Parliament, for the next two and a half years. The new European Commission President is Jean-Claude Juncker.
Ukrainian President Petro Perosenko said Tuesday that the army had taken control of a checkpoint occupied by pro-Russian separatists in the region of Lugansk, in eastern Ukraine. According tot a release by the Presidency, this is the first victory of the anti-terror operations that were resumed on Tuesday, after President Perosenko had refuse to extend the ceasefire deadline. His Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, said Moscow would continue to defend the rights of the Russian ethnics from outside the country’s borders by using all means available.
The Romanian Foreign Ministry has firmly condemned the assasination of three Israeli teenagers and has conveyed its condolences to the mourning families. The Ministry has voiced hope that those quilty of this horrible crime will be brought to justice. The bodies of the three Israeli teenagers, who went missing during a late-night hiking trip, were found in the occupied West Bank on Monday, as Israel vowed to punish Hamas – the Palestinian group it accuses of abducting and killing them. Hamas denied the accusations.
On Tuesday Romanian tennis player Simona Halep qualified to the quarterfinals in Wimbledon with a 6-3, 6-0 win over Zarina Dizas of Kazahstan. Halep will next play against German Sabine Lisicki. The WTA 3rd ranked, Simona Halep is seeded third in the women’s singles in Wimbledon. Halep reached the fourth round of the 2013 U.S. Open, the quarterfinals of the Australian Open in January and came within a set of capturing the French Open earlier this month.
