Radio România Internațional

Tag: air police

  • July 26, 2018 UPDATE

    July 26, 2018 UPDATE

    EU PRESIDENCY Romania has finalised a calendar of the events and meetings to be held in the country and abroad during its presidency of the EU Council in the first half of 2019. The announcement was made by the Minister Delegate for European Affairs, Victor Negrescu, who presented a report of his term in office so far. The calendar includes 1,400 formal meetings in Brussels and Strasbourg, and another 300 meetings in Romania. Negrescu added that the venues for these meetings have also been chosen.



    ANTI-CORRUPTION In Bucharest, the 4 candidates for the office of head of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate were interviewed on Thursday by the Justice Minister Tudorel Toader. On Friday a decision will be reached on either the nomination of one candidate, or the restart of the procedure, Tudorel Toader said. The 4 candidates are prosecutor Florentina Mirică – head of the Corruption Combating Division of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, prosecutor Cristian Lazăr – deputy chief of the Prosecution Division in the General Prosecutors Office, prosecutor Marius Iacob – deputy chief of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate and prosecutor Elena Grecu – head of division in the central structure of the Directorate. The former head of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate Laura Codruţa Kovesi was dismissed under an order issued on July 9 by President Klaus Iohannis, further to a ruling by the Constitutional Court of Romania.




    GREECE The Foreign Ministry in Bucharest has announced there is no information on whether there are any Romanians among the victims of the wildfires in Greece. The latest death toll of the wildfires that recently ravaged Greece stands at 81; 200 other people have been wounded with scores still missing. The Custodian of the Crown of Romania and president of the Romanian Red Cross, Margareta, has conveyed a message to Greece in which she expressed her compassion for the fire victims at the same time pledging support from the Romanian Red Cross. In turn, the Romanian Orthodox Church has urged all its churches around the country and abroad to donate money in order to give financial support to the victims of the fires in Greece. The funds raised will be eventually donated to the Archbishopric of Athens. On Wednesday Romania dispatched two planes to the fire-affected areas: one fitted with fire-extinguishing equipment and a Hercules C-130 to provide logistic support. Sweden has also reported a series of forest fires close to the Arctic Circle where several towns have already been evacuated.




    SWINE FEVER – In Romania, the authorities are trying to contain African swine fever, with an emergency committee set up by the Agriculture Ministry to monitor the outbreak. The ministry has also informed the European Commission that it will apply for compensations for the producers who have been forced to kill their animals. Some 440 hotbeds have been identified since the beginning of the year.



    AIR POLICE Two British Typhoon fighters were launched on Thursday from the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in south-eastern Romania, because a Russian aircraft flying over the Black Sea was heading for NATO airspace. A news release issued by the British Air Force mentions that the Russian bomber was a Su-24 FENCER aircraft. In May, when they were deployed on their 4-month mission in Romania, the British fighters were also forced to respond to a Russian aircraft approaching NATO airspace. The British aircraft are in Romania on enhanced air policing missions.


    (translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)

  • June 14, 2017

    June 14, 2017

    CABINET – The fate of the leftist Government of Romania, headed by PM Sorin Grindeanu, will be decided today in a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Social Democratic Party in power. The Committee will assess the performance of each Cabinet minister and a possible reshuffling. At the end of last week, the Social Democrat leader, Liviu Dragnea, who is also the head of the Chamber of Deputies, voiced his discontent with the work of several ministers, without disclosing any names. Dragnea also said he was not considering dismissing the entire Cabinet. In turn, PM Grindeanu said he had made his own assessment and he was content with the effects of the measures taken by his Cabinet. The Grindeanu Government took office after Decembers parliamentary elections.




    DEFENCE – The Romanian Defence Minister, Gabriel Leş, and his British counterpart, Michael Fallon, are on a visit to the Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base in south-eastern Romania. The two officials will have meetings with the pilots and technical staff working on the Typhoon aircraft of the Royal Air Forces, which have arrived in Romania for air policing missions. The planes are taking part in joint missions with MiG-21 LanceR aircraft of the Romanian Air Forces, until the end of August. According to a news release issued by the Defence Ministry, the RAF aircraft have been deployed to Romania as part of an Action Plan to ensure the NATO operational capability both in the northern and the southern part of the eastern flank of the Alliance.




    HEARINGS – The Mayor of Cluj in north-western Romania, Emil Boc, was heard by a special parliamentary committee investigating the circumstances of the 2009 presidential election. The prime minister of the country at that time and a loyal aide to then President Traian Basescu, who won a new term in office after defeating the former Social Democrat leader Mircea Geoană, Boc was the only one heard today. The head of the National Anti-Corruption Agency, Codruta Kovesi, refused to appear before the committee, but apparently she will receive a new invitation. The committee also requested a 60-day extension of the investigation and the postponement of the deadline for their report to early September. The committee was set up after the controversial journalist Dan Andronic, a political adviser to Basescu in 2009, made public allegations that the 2009 presidential vote had been tampered with.




    DIPLOMACY – The Romanian Foreign Minister, Teodor Meleşcanu, took part on Tuesday in Berlin in a conference on a decade of Romanian EU membership. On this occasion, he said that although Romania was not a founding member of the EU, it wishes to make a significant contribution to the future of the European project, so that the Union may remain an efficient and united community of values, playing a major role at world level. The President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, will also be on a visit to Berlin between June 19 and 21, during which he will have meetings with his German counterpart, Frank – Walter Steinmeier, and with Chancellor Angela Merkel.




    NUCLEAR PHYSICS – The director for nuclear security at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics and Engineering Research and Development in Măgurele, southern Romania, Mitică Drăguşin, Ph.D., is the first Romanian expert in nuclear decommissioning and the management of radioactive waste at the European Commission and parliament. The physicist was selected by the EUs Joint Research Centre. The Măgurele high power laser project is taking part in the World Expo 2017 in Kazakhstan, where the team will also present their offer in the field of decommissioning nuclear research facilities. The scientists in Măgurele are thus trying to generate top-level trade contacts to promote Romanian technologies and experts.




    HANDBALL – Romanias womens handball team has qualified to the World Championship due in December in Germany, after outplaying Austria 33-24 away from home on Tuesday night, in the second leg of the playoffs. In the first match, played on Friday at home in Oradea, Romania won 34-29. Romania is the only country to have taken part in all the 22 editions of the World Championship so far, and in 2015 it won the bronze medals.


    (translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)