Radio România Internațional

Tag: CAR CRASH

  • The state of infrastructure in Romania and road safety

    The state of infrastructure in Romania and road safety

    The car crash that occurred Saturday in Ialomiţa county, in southern Romania, in which 10 people were killed after a truck hit a minibus coming from the opposite direction, gives a new warning signal related to road safety. Actually, Romania is on top position within the EU in terms of traffic related deaths.



    The investigation in the Ialomiţa tragedy is currently under way. Some sources say the truck was running at the legal speed limit and the driver observed the rest stops. Still there is suspicion that he might have fallen asleep or used the mobile phone while driving. Starting on Saturday, the use of mobile phones while driving will be punished by big fines and even the suspension of the driving license. Also traffic checks have been announced to verify the tachographs that register the driving and resting time of transporters.



    The transport minister Răzvan Cuc said he would propose the introduction of devices for scanning drivers’ retina, meant to identify tiredness and warn drivers when they cross the line separating the lanes. According to the vice-president of the National Union of Road Transporters in Romania, Constantin Isac, further prevention measures are needed which do not regard professional drivers alone.



    Constantin Isac: “Bucharest’s ring road and also the ring roads of all the big cities are actually the big problem, and I’m referring to all the facilities a parking should provide: toilets, hygiene areas, guards. It’s not only drivers and the infrastructure to be blamed, but also the way traffic control is undertaken.”



    An adviser on traffic safety issues and a former deputy director of the Traffic Police Directorate, Costin Tatuc has more details: “There should be some more road-related improvements that should allow the separation of traffic sources, and I am referring to roads for slow vehicles that should be parallel to the national roads. The best solution to avoid localities is to build motorways.”



    In fact motorways are one of Romania’s weaknesses. 30 years after the 1989 anti-Communist uprising and after more than 12 years of EU membership, no highway was built to cross the Carpathians. At the end of 2018, Romania had almost 800 kms of motorways, of which some 100 kms from the time of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. The few segments of highway that have been built so far connect Romania to its neighbors rather than allowing Romanians in the center of the country to get to Bucharest faster or to shorten the time spent driving to the Black Sea Coast. Besides the lack of interest of those in power, bureaucracy was another obstacle in the way of highway building, alongside the selection of contractors, including foreign ones, whose main aim was to make huge profits. (translation by L. Simion)

  • May 27, 2018 UPDATE

    May 27, 2018 UPDATE

    ROMANIANS WORLDWIDE – The large Romanian Diaspora contributes to the promotion of our identity, each Romanian national being the message bearer of our culture and customs, says Romanias President, Klaus Iohannis, in a message conveyed on the Day of the Romanians Worldwide, which is celebrated every year on the last Sunday of May, as of 2015. “The state institutions should make the Romanians worldwide regain confidence in their country. This way, the Romanians can return home and use their skills, renewed mentality and the experience accumulated abroad to the benefit of community, and thus contribute to developing a stronger Romania, the president also says in his message. President Iohannis on Wednesday received a group of Romanians who hold public positions in their countries of residence, to underline how important it is to get them involved in the communities in which they live and to take a first step forward towards creating informal networks of professionals to promote the exchange of experience and good practices. To celebrate the Day of the Romanians Worldwide, musician Mircea Florian gave an electronic and folk-rock music concert in downtown Bucharest. The event was part of a festival devoted to the culture of the Romanians worldwide, which also included an exhibition of Romanian painters living in the country and outside its borders.



    JUSTICE – To avoid sanctions, the provisions of the EU Directive on the presumption of innocence should be transposed into the national law until the European Commission notifies the European Court of Justice, the relevant minister, Tudorel Toader said on Sunday. The European Commission has launched the infringement procedure against Romania for failing to transpose the provisions of this Directive into its Criminal and Criminal Procedure Codes, respectively. Infringement is a standard procedure used by the European Commission against the EU member states which do not announce in due time the transposition of the measures included in the EU Directive, AGERPRES news agency on Friday quoted an EC spokesperson as saying. According to the spokesperson, the procedure envisages 10 EU member states, and the transposition of the provisions of the respective Directive into the national law does not run counter to the legitimate objective of fighting corruption.



    REPATRIATION – The Romanian Foreign Ministry has announced the bodies of the nine Romanian citizens who died in a car accident in neighbouring Hungary on Tuesday have been repatriated. According to a communiqué issued by the aforementioned ministry, the repatriation efforts have been coordinated by a crisis cell, set up at the level of the institution. The repatriation expenses have been covered by the ministry, from the special emergency fund, the communiqué also reads. The minivan involved in the car crash was coming from Slovenia, heading for Romania.

    COMMEMORATIONS – A series of commemorative events were held in Sighetu
    Marmaţiei (northern Romania), on Sunday, when the bust of Elie Wiesel, the 1986
    Nobel Peace Prize Winner was unveiled. Many guests, among whom representatives
    of the authorities, historians, members of the Jewish communities in Romania
    attended the events at the Ellie Wiesel Memorial House. Elie Wiesel, a
    Holocaust survivor, was born in Sighetu Marmaţiei, in 1928, and passed away in
    New York, two years ago. He was an
    American writer, philosopher and member of the American Academy of Arts and
    Letters and honorary member of the Romanian Academy.


    EUROPEAN ROWING JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIPS – Romania won seven medals- one gold, five
    silver and one bronze at the 2018 European Rowing Junior Championships which
    came to a close on Sunday in Gravelines, France. The gold medal was grabbed by the women’s
    four, cox-less. Romania has had the second largest number of rowers in the competition,
    42, after Italy, with a total of some 470 rowers.

  • November 7 2016, UPDATE

    November 7 2016, UPDATE


    VISIT NATO appreciates Romanias contribution to its missions and activities said on Monday the NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller, on the first day of her visit to Bucharest. During the meeting she had with the Romanian Foreign Minister Lazar Comanescu she also talked about the anti-missile system in Deveselu and the fact that Romania had activated a multi-national division with the NATO Multinational Division Southeast, aimed at supporting defense and security in this part of Europe. On Tuesday, Mrs. Gottemoeller will meet with high-ranking officials from 9 allied states in Central and Eastern Europe, namely Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, who will be attending a regional meeting. Mrs. Gottemoeller is the first woman to hold the position of NATO Deputy Secretary General. Previously she held the office of Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security for the U.S. Department of State.



    EU POLICY The European Commissioner for Regional Policy, the Romanian Corina Cretu, is paying a two day visit to Sweden as of Monday. The Brussels official will talk with ministers and representatives of the national and regional authorities about implementing the cohesion policy in Sweden. Corina Cretu will visit EU funded projects in the city of Vasetras. On Tuesday, Corina Cretu will open in Stockholm the proceedings of the 7th forum on the EU macro-regional strategy for the Baltic Sea region. 1000 participants will attend the event, which will focus on the future of the region and the main objectives of the Strategy for the year 2030.



    CORRUPTION The former head of the National Fiscal Administration Agency (ANAF) Sorin Blejnar was detained on Monday by anti-corruption prosecutors in Ploiesti, southern Romania, for influence peddling. According to the National Anticorruption Directorate, in 2011 Blejnar accepted from a businessman the promise to get 20% of the value of IT contracts concluded with ANAF. The former head of the Agency is accused that, together with other employees of the institution, allegedly got some 3 million Euros in bribe. On Tuesday, Blejnar will appear before the magistrates who will rule on his 30 day preventive detention.



    PAY RISE On Monday, the Romanian Chamber of Deputies adopted 15% pay rises and bonuses for the employees in the health-care and education sectors, as of December 1st 2016 and January 1st 2017 respectively. The Liberals, who had criticized the bill before, saying its just electoral bait, refused to participate in the voting. The measures were adopted although the Government had warned that the impact on the budget would stand at some 4.8 billion lei. Also on Monday, the Senate tacitly endorsed a bill on increasing the pension calculation index. Another bill tacitly endorsed by the Senate raises to 500 lei the pensions of the former members of the cooperative associations in agriculture. The bills will be submitted to the Chamber of Deputies, which is the decision-making forum in this matter.



    CAR CRASH 24 people wounded in Saturdays pileup on the fog-bound highway linking Bucharest to Constanta (in the southeast) are still in hospital. One of the injured is in a critical condition. Investigators are trying to establish who caused the multi-vehicle accident that killed 4 people. Prosecutors have opened a criminal case file for manslaughter and bodily injury and started the technical verification of the 29 cars involved in the multi-car crash. Several drivers had their licenses suspended for careless driving and failure to maintain safe distance between cars, since fog was very dense on the highway.



    AWARD Kasper Holten, the Director of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, was decorated by the Romanian President Klaus Iohannis with the National Order Faithful Service in Rank of Commander. According to a communiqué by the Presidential Administration, the order was granted in recognition for the constant support to Romanian art, the remarkable contribution to promoting Enescu in the world and for promoting Romanias and Romanian cultures image and interests in Great Britain.



    BULGARIAN ELECTION In Bulgaria, the candidate of the Socialist opposition, Major General of the Reserve, Rumen Radev, and that of the GERB center-right party, Ţeţka Ţaceva, have obtained most of the votes in Sundays presidential election. They will face each other in a second round of voting scheduled for November 13. The former Commander of the Bulgarian Air Force is ranked 1st, at a small distance from his challenger Ţeţka Ţaceva who is supported by the current power in Sofia and who obtained 22.5% of the votes. The Bulgarian PM Boiko Borisov said his party obtained best results, this landslide victory being due to their coalition with other parties. He announced he would resign if General Radev won the presidential election.



    US ELECTION On Tuesday Americans will vote for their president choosing between the Democrat Hillary Clinton, the wife of the former president Bill Clinton, and the Republican billionaire Donald Trump. Polls show a 3-4% advantage for the Democrat candidate, a percentage which is within the limits of the margin of error. If Hillary Clinton wins the election she will carry on the projects started by Barack Obama, namely involvement in the international coalition against terrorism and strengthening of NATOs eastern flank in order to discourage Russia. Analysts say Donald Trumps victory would critically change the situation, in the sense that the US will be more open towards Moscow and will no longer receive refugees from Syria.



    HANDBALL – Romanias mens handball team on Sunday defeated the Polish team 28-23 in Cluj-Napoca (northwest). This is one of the teams most resounding victories of the past years against Poland, bronze medallist at last years World Handball Championship. The match counted for Group 2 of the preliminaries of the 2018 European Mens Handball Championship. Trained by Xavier Pascual, who also trains the famous FC Barcelona, the Romanian handballers also won the away match against Belarus last week. Romania is the group leader with 4 points, being followed by Belarus with 2 points, Serbia 2 points and Poland 0 points. The next match of the Romanian mens handball team will be against Serbia on home ground. The match is scheduled for May 2017. Romania has not managed to qualify to the final of a European Championship since 1996, the latest final tournament in which they participated being that of the 2011 World Champion.




  • Main suspect in Hexi Pharma case apparently dies in car crash

    Main suspect in Hexi Pharma case apparently dies in car crash

    In what seems to be a bizarre coincidence, the owner of Hexi Pharma, the company that has been selling diluted biocides to hundreds of Romanian public hospitals, apparently died in a car accident on Sunday afternoon. Condrea was presumably found dead after he crashed into a tree, on a local road north of Bucharest. The Police have announced the opening of a criminal investigation in this case. They dont rule out the possibility of a suicide, as they found no breaking marks at the accident site. The victim was found disfigured, so the police assumed it was Dan Condrea as they found his ID documents in the car. The identity of the victim will only be confirmed after a DNA test.



    On Monday, Condrea was supposed to be heard by prosecutors again, running the risk of being detained. Just a few weeks ago, a journalistic investigation showed how the concentration of biocides supplied by Hexi Pharma to health-care units all over the country was up to ten times lower than legally required. Consequently, the company has been prosecuted for actions running counter to disease prevention and counterfeiting. Also, the Court has imposed some legal restrictions on Hexi Pharma in terms of liquidation procedure and its right to produce and sell biocides, to name just a few.



    The resignation of the Health Minister, Patriciu Achimas Cadariu, and this weeks meeting of the Higher Defence Council to discuss the issue show the magnitude of the scandal.



    President Klaus Iohannis, however, has warned that a meeting will not solve the problem: “This problem wont be fixed at the meeting of the Higher Defense Council. Here we discuss the issue and find connections between, lets say, the activity of the Health Ministry and the Intelligence Services on this matter. But the solution does not lie with the Higher Defense Council but with the relevant institutions. Policies in the field should be drawn up by the Health Ministry. Its also the Health Ministry that should come up with improved norms, with procedures likely to prevent this sort of problems. And its up to prosecutors and policemen to find the people who broke the law.



    The diluted disinfectants issue, although extremely serious, is only a small part of the gloomy picture painted by the Romanian healthcare system. Severely under financed for years, the staffs small salaries, the procurement policy, the poor hospital infrastructure and the suspicions regarding the pharmaceutical market have fuelled peoples lack of trust in the system, a system that seems to be a “national priority only in theory.

  • 23 May, 2016

    23 May, 2016

    CAR CRASH — Dan Condrea, manager of Hexi Pharma, the company at the center of the hospital disinfectant scandal, died on Sunday in a car crash. The police have not ruled out the possibility of suicide. The investigation was taken over by the prosecutors assigned to the High Court of Cassation and Justice. At the same time, the crisis in the healthcare system will be next week on the agenda of the Higher Defense Council.



    STATE VISIT — Romanian PM Dacian Ciolos started on Sunday a four day working visit to the United States. His main objective is to develop further economic cooperation as part of the Strategic Partnership between the two countries. According to Radio Romanias correspondent, todays agenda includes a meeting in Detroit with the management of Ford automotive company and a visit to the company R&D center. The Prime Minister will further hold talks in Washington with VP Joe Biden and the secretaries of agriculture, commerce and energy. As part of the visit, the premier and his delegation will also be meeting members of the Romanian community and Romanian businesspeople.



    COUNCIL — Romanian Foreign Minister Lazar Comanescu, takes part today in the Council for Foreign Affairs. On the agenda in Brussels are the EU regional strategy for Syria and Iraq, the anti-ISIS strategy, and migration, according to the Romanian Foreign Ministry. At a working lunch, the ministers will discuss the EUs global strategy, in preparation for the European Council of June 2016. Comanescu will also be attending the meeting of foreign ministers of EU countries with their counterparts in the Eastern Partnership, made up of the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus), where talks will focus on achieving the aims set at the summit in May 2015.



    CANNES — Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, winner of the Palme dOr in 2007, won last night in Cannes the best director award for his film Baccalaureate (Graduation). The feature length film tells the story of a small town physician who has to settle an incident involving his daughter right before her graduation exam. Another Romanian director, Bogdan Mirica, won the film critic award for his movie Dogs. The Palme dOr went to Ken Loach for I, Daniel Blake, and the Grand Prize went to Its Only the End of the World by Xavier Dolan. Well have more after the news.



    ANTI-CORRUPTION — In Bucharest, representatives of police and anti-corruption organizations from 9 countries, along with representatives of the EC and the European Health Fraud and Corruption Network are debating for two days investigating corruption in the healthcare system. The meeting is hosted by the Romanian National Anti-corruption Directorate. The purpose of the working group is to offer a framework for dialog, discussing case studies and best practices in fighting corruption in the medical field. Among the participating countries are Austria, Germany, Moldova, Serbia and Spain.