HEAT WAVE – Meteorologists on Saturday issued two alerts, one yellow and one orange, against thunderstorms, in place until Sunday morning for the west and center. Powerful thunderstorms, accompanied by strong wind and hail will be expected during the interval. Several other weather alerts against extreme heat are in effect for Saturday in the south, where temperatures are expected to reach 38 degrees Celsius and the THI will exceed the critical level of 80 units. The capital city is under a code yellow alert against severe heat, with maximum temperatures expected to reach 35 degrees.
ENERGY – The heat wave affecting Romania in recent weeks has led to an increase in energy consumption, seriously testing the national electricity grid. While no major blackouts occurred, the Romanian authorities are preparing a series of measures with short and medium-term effect to secure energy input, regardless of weather conditions. In a session of the Energy Task Force, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu called for accelerating investments in the national network for electricity transport and for expanding production and storage capacities. In turn, Energy Minister Sebastian Burduja said that, after 15 years, Romania is ready to adopt a national energy strategy, which could help the authorities plan and prioritize investments and relevant projects to ensure national energy security with competitive prices for electricity and natural gas.
AVIATION – Romania on Saturday marked the National Day of Aviation and Air Forces, traditionally held on the Feast Day of Saint Elijah, the patron saint of Romanian aviators. A military and religious ceremony was held in Bucharest on this occasion, with Romanian officials bringing floral tributes to the memory of Romanian aviators. A number of aircraft overflew the proceedings, including F-16 Fighting Falcon, C-130 Hercules, C-27J Spartan, IAR-330 and IAR-99 jets, EC-135 SMURD and S-70M Black Hawk helicopters, a Learjet 75 aircraft of the Interior Defense Ministry, SA-365 Dauphin gunships of the Romanian Intelligence Service, and an Extra 300 aircraft belonging to the Romanian Air Club. Attending the air show was also a C-17 Globemaster aircraft from Hungary and F-18 Hornet fighter jets of the Finnish Air Forces.
TECH OUTAGE – Users and companies in various essential industries around the world, including banking, air travel, mass-media and healthcare are resuming their normal activity on Saturday in the wake of the largest global tech outage in history. A faulty updated to Microsoft Windows systems operated by Crowdstrike grounded thousands of flights, stalled banking and healthcare services, and badly hit other sectors on Friday. The problem was eliminated at its root, although some systems will take a while to automatically return to normal operating parameters, Crowdstrike officials say. Governments and public services were also impacted by the incident, which could prompt lawmakers to pass special laws to protect the population against similar outages in the future. Romania was also impacted by the tech outage, with several international flights reporting delays.
CRIME STATISTICS – In the first quarter of 2024, law enforcement and anti-crime prosecutors organized a total of 900 operations, a third of which were large-scale, up by 2.5% compared to the first six months of 2023, the head of the Directorate for Combating Organized Crime, Cătălin Şerban, told a press briefing on Saturday. The operations targeted 3,400 people, of whom 1,275 were detained for 24 hours. Over 1,000 people were temporarily arrested, up by 8.9% compared to the same period last year. The Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) took part in EUROPOL policy cycles, taking on coordination roles and conducting operations in the fields of human and immigrant trafficking, cyber crime and drug traffucking. (VP)
