July 19, 2014 UPDATE
A look at some of the top stories in Romania today.
România Internațional, 19.07.2014, 13:16
Speaking about the plane crash in Ukraine, Romania’s president Traian Basescu said the killing of 298 innocent people in a terrorist act should not be without consequences. Also on Saturday, the government in Kiev accused the pro-Russian rebels in the east of the country who control the area of the crash of trying to destroy the traces of their “crime”. Earlier, Kiev said the members of a contact group made up of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE reached an agreement with the pro-Russian separatists to create a security zone 20 km from the site of the crash. Among the victims are Dutch, Australian, Indonesian, British, German, French, Belgian and Philippine nationals, as well as a Romanian with dual citizenship.
Romania has demonstrated that it has taken its NATO membership very seriously, remaining committed to the end to the most important military mission carried out by the Alliance since its creation, namely the ISAF mission in Afghanistan. This statement was made by the defence minister Mircea Dusa in the southern city of Craiova, at an event marking the end of the Romanian Army mission in Afghanistan. Dusa awarded the Badge of Honour to the members of the 30 units who achieved with notable results during their mission. Romania started deploying military to the theatres of operation in Afghanistan in June 2002, when the Red Scorpions battalion from Craiova was sent to the southern province of Zabul. In the last 12 years, Romania has contributed 25,000 troops to NATO operations in Afghanistan and has lost 26 soldiers. The pullout of the Romanian troops started in June 2014 and from October, only 200 military will stay on in Afghanistan to help train the Afghan army.
Romania has been applied financial corrections worth 285 million euros in 2013, more than in 2012, due to irregularities in the absorption of European funds, the European Commission said on Friday in its annual Report on the Protection of EU’s Financial Interests and the Fight against Fraud. The highest portion of these corrections, amounting to 219 million euros, refers to the European Social Fund which finances, among others, the Operational Programme Human Resources Development and the Operational Programme Administrative Capacity Development. Other corrections were applied to projects financed through the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund, the Cohesion Fund and the Rural Development Fund. According to the government’s convergence programme, Romania absorbed over 5.5 billion euros last year.
Four NATO military vessels from the Naval Group against Maritime Mines are in the Romanian port of Constanta until Monday. On Friday, they took part in joint Romanian and foreign training activities. The Naval Group currently in Romania is an integrated multinational force specialising in mining and demining and includes two ships from Italy, one from Turkey and another from Britain. They will leave Constanta on Monday to take part in sea exercises alongside Romanian vessels and helicopters.
The pair Florin Mergea of Romania and Marin Draganja of Croatia on Saturday qualified to the doubles final in Hamburg, at an ATP tennis tournament worth almost 1.2 million euros. In the final, they meet Alexander Peya of Austria and Bruno Soares of Brazil. This is Mergea’s third ATP final, having won two doubles titles in his career, last year in Vienna together with Lukas Rosol of the Czech Republic and this year again in Vina del Mar, Chile, together with Oliver Marach of Austria.
A folk festival of the Romanians in the Balkans began on Saturday in the village of Žitkovica in Serbia. Artists and folk ensembles from Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Albania, Maceodnia and the Republic of Moldova are taking part. The festival, now in its 8th year, also features exhibitions of historical documents and photographs about Romanian communities, handicraft objects, icons on glass and a folk costume parade.
