Newsflash, July 13
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Corina Cristea, 13.07.2013, 12:19
International Monetary Fund General Director Christine Lagarde will be paying a two-day visit to Romania starting next Monday. Lagarde will be meeting with Bucharest officials and representatives of the private sector, the civil society and scientific community. Talks will focus on the economic prospects of Romania. On July 17th, after Lagarde’s visit comes to an end, a joint mission of the IMF and the European Commission will be coming to Bucharest to open talks with Romanian authorities with a view to signing a new precationary stand-by agreement. Romania has recently successfully completed a second such agreement worth 3.5 billion euros.
Four of the five people involved in Saturday’s car accident in southwestern France were Romanians, the Romanian Foreign Ministry in Bucharest has announced. We recall that five people were killed in Teich en Gironde, southwestern France, after their car collided with a freight truck. According to preliminary police investigations, the freight truck overturned on the car of the Romanians after one of its tires blew.
Romania expressed its sympathy for the victims of the accident in Brétigny-sur-Orge, close to Paris, which killed at least seven people and injured another 30. The tragic rail accident in Paris was caused by an equipment failure, the French National Rail Company La SNCF announced on Saturday. According to the initial report a piece of metal connecting two rails became detached at points 200m from Brétigny and this caused the derailment. La SNCF gave assurances it would conduct a thorough verification of all such connectors across the entire network. Previously French Transport Minister Frédéric Cuvillier had announced that Friday’s tragic rail accident in Brétigny-sur-Orge had not been caused by a “human error”. This is the bloodiest rail accident in France in the last 25 years.
US President Barack Obama talked on the phone with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin about Edward Snowden, a former consultant of the US intelligence services who has recently made important revelations regarding a secret US electronic surveillance program. The conversation follows after the White House called on Moscow not to provide Snowden with what it has termed a “platform for propaganda”. Snowden, who for the past three weeks has been in a transit area of one of Moscow’s airports, has pointed the finger at the “unfair campaign” by means of which the US is trying to prevent him from seeking asylum in a foreign country. Moscow said Snowden could remain in Russia provided he ceased any action against the US. Snowden has sought political asylum in over 20 countries by now, but only Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela have expressed an interest in sheltering him.
Romanian tennis player Simona Halep on Saturday qualified to the final of the WTA clay court tournament in Budapest totalling 235 thousand dollars in prize money. In the semifinals Halep outperformed Romanian Alexandra Cadantu score 6-2, 7-6. In the final Halep will go up against Yvonne Meusburger, who had previously brushed aside Chanelle Scheepers of South Africa, 6-2, 6-2. This year Halep triumphed in the clay court tournament in Nurnberg and in the grass court tournament in s-Hertogenbosch. This is the third final for Halep in the last four tournaments, after she was knocked out in the second round at Wimbledon.
