August 3, 2014
A roundup of domestic and international news
România Internațional, 03.08.2014, 13:49
According to the latest reports, four people have died this week in Romania, killed by flood waters. Over 250 villages in 11 counties have been affected, 1800 people have been evacuated and another 780 have been rescued from life-threatening situations. Following the heavy flooding in the south of the country, the Romanian Orthodox Patriarchy has started a humanitarian campaign aimed at helping people in the region. The patriarchy has urged all parish priests and monks to organize collections of food, water and sanitation products for the many families left without a home.
The Romanian Minister for European Funds, Eugen Teodorovici has stated in an interview to AGERPRESS news agency that he is unhappy with the amount allocated to Romania by the EU within the 2014-2020 budget framework and by the European regulations that force Romania to invest more in the social field, although more money is needed for infrastructure. Teodorovici has also said that the first project applications for the coming budget framework will be launched in October at the latest. He has announced that one of the two state-owned banks in Romania will become a development bank in late August and a new draft package amending the legislation on public procurement will be ready in October.
Romanian is the native language of most foreign residents in Italy. It has been reported as mother tongue by some 800 thousand people, accounting for 21.9% of the foreign population in that country, reads the Romanian Gazette published in the peninsula. Romanian is followed by Arabic, Albanian and Spanish. The information was made public by the Italian Statistics Institute, in a report on the linguistic diversity among foreign citizens in Italy. According to the institute, 160 thousand foreigners stated Italian as their mother tongue, which is 4.5% of the foreign population.
One hundred years since Germany declared war on France, presidents Francois Holland and Joachim Gauck meet in the Hartmannswillerkopf area in the north-east of France to pay homage to the French and German soldiers who fought and died in WWI. Over 30 thousand men were killed in the battle aimed at conquering that summit, at the foot of which the ashes of 12 thousand unknown soldiers were later laid. The two presidents also met back in 2013, in the centre of France, to commemorate the massacres committed by the SS in June 1944.
International investigators are trying to carry on the investigation at the Malaysian plane crash scene in an area controlled by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. On Saturday they had to clear part of the perimeter because of artillery shots. After the fresh sanctions imposed on Russia, tension between Moscow and Brussels is escalating. According to some international experts, although the EU measures are a blow to the Russian economy, President Putin will not give in to pressure. In another move, Russia has accused the EU of having secretly lifted restrictions on the delivery of military technology and equipment to Ukraine.
The Israeli ground troops have started to pull out from Gaza, along with the completion of the operation aimed at destroying the Palestinian tunnels, but air raids have continued, killing at least 15 Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced at a press conference that the operation aimed at destroying Hamas’s infrastructure will continue, even after the tunnel operation is completed, and the army will be redeployed, depending on Israel’s security needs. At this stage, the government has no intention of committing itself to anybody under a cease-fire agreement. According to our correspondent, Israel has informed the Egyptian mediator it will not send a delegation to Cairo for consultations. A Palestinian delegation from Ramallah is already in Egypt, but Hamas representatives could not leave Gaza. The head of Hamas’s political bureau, Khaled Mashal, who lives in exile, has stated in an interview on CNN that Hamas has rejected the cease fire. In his opinion, the presence of Israeli troops in Gaza to destroy the tunnels is an aggression.
The pair made up of Romanian tennis player Horia Tecau and the Dutch Jean Julie Rojer has qualified for the double final of the ATP tournament in Washington, with over 1 million 399 thousand dollars in prize money, after defeating on Saturday Jonathan Erlich and Rajeev Ram, of Israel and the US respectively. Tecau and Rojer, who have secured for themselves 42,180 dollars and 300 ATP points, will play their 6th ATP final against the pair made up of the Austrialian Sam Groth and Leander Paqes from India.
