Radio România Internațional

Tag: Grand

  • May 17, 2022 UPDATE

    May 17, 2022 UPDATE

    MEETING The EU and its member states will continue to provide military support
    to Ukraine the EU’s Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell has announced at the end
    of the Foreign Affairs Council. The ministers have approved another 500 million
    euros for the member countries, which offer military gear and weapons to
    Ukraine. The event, which brought together EU defence ministers, was also
    attended by Romania’s Defence Minister Vasile Dincu. High on the agenda was the
    implementation of the Strategic Compass, (the new common defence policy) with
    emphasis on increasing the effectiveness of the missions and operations run as
    part of the Common Defence and Security Policy. Romania’s Foreign Minister
    Bogdan Aurescu was also in Brussels on Monday to attend a meeting of his EU counterparts.
    Among other things the Romanian official presented measures taken by Romania to
    support Ukraine and said that Bucharest would carry on humanitarian efforts,
    including by providing assistance to the refugees who had come and continue to come
    to this country and by operating the international humanitarian hub in Suceava,
    north-eastern Romania. Aurescu also voiced support for the sixth sanction
    package against Moscow and underlined the need for a stepped-up international
    effort for the creation of a corridor, including at sea, for shipping Ukrainian
    products, mainly cereals to third destinations via Romania.










    GAS Starting gas
    exploitation in the Black Sea represents a major objective in the process of
    becoming independent from Russian gas, Romania’s Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca
    said on Tuesday during the talks he had with Eric Faillnet, director of the
    Carlyle International Energy Partners, the main shareholder of Black Sea
    Oil&Gas. The new offshore law, initiated at the level of the ruling
    coalition, and to be endorsed shortly, creates a predictable and stable
    framework for investors, Prime Minister Ciuca went on to say adding that it
    offers a ballance between the interests of the state and private entrepreneurs.
    Romania even has the opportunity of becoming a gas exporter in the region.
    Representatives of Black Sea Oil&Gas have announced the project in Midia is
    ready to kick off in June, after the last test are conducted, with a supply
    capacity of one billion cubic meters annually.








    TENNIS Romanian
    tennis player Mihaela Buzarnescu on Tuesday secured a 2-6, 6-4, 6-2 win against
    Xinyun Han of China in the first round of the main draw of the Grand Slam
    tournament of Roland Garros. The Rromanian player is to next play Susan
    Bandecchi of Switzerland. Another Romanian player, Irina Bara on Tuesday made
    it to the competition’s second qualifying round after a 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 win
    against Jesika Maleckova of the Czech Republic. From the delegation
    representing Romania at the event, Simona Halep, Sorana Cirstea, Gabriela Ruse,
    Irina Begu and Ana Bogdan are directly qualified to the main draw. Also on Tuesday,
    the Romanian-Russian pair Monica Niculescu/Alexandra Panova qualified for the
    quarter finals of the WTA tennis tournament in Rabat, Morocco, with prize money
    over 251 thousand dollars. The two had defeated Alicia Barnett and Olivia
    Nicholls of Britain. The second-seeded Niculescu and Panova are to be playing next
    Ana Danilina of Kazahstan and Ingrid Neel of the USA.








    UKRAINE Roughly 265 Ukrainian soldiers who were holed up in the bunkers and
    tunnels below Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant have surrendered to the Russian
    troops and are considered POWs starting Monday, Russia’s Defence Ministry has
    announced. According to Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the prisoners, some
    of whom are wounded, would be treated in line with international norms. In
    turn, Kyiv has said a prisoner swap will be taking place, as soon as the
    situation of the wounded soldiers is improved. Ukrainian authorities last week
    said that 1,000 troops, including 600 wounded, according to their commanders,
    were holed up in the bunkers and tunnels below the Azov steelworks, which
    became a symbol of the Ukrainian resistance after the Russian invasion of the
    country. They retreated to Azovstal after more than a month siege of Mariupol,
    a strategic port at the Sea of Azov, in south-eastern Ukraine, attacked by the
    Russian troops since the beginning of the invasion and almost entirely
    destroyed. The city on the coast of the Sea of Azov is strategically situated
    between the Moscow-annexed Crimea and the mining region of Donbas, where the
    two pro-Russia republics are and where Russia has stepped up its onslaught.




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  • August 31, 2021

    August 31, 2021

    COVID-19 Romania is still in the green
    tier in spite of the rising number of Covid-19 infections. Authorities in this
    country have lately reported 700 new cases and 11 related fatalities. 280
    people are being treated in intensive care units and the coordinator of the
    country’s vaccine rollout, Valeriu Gheorghita, has cautioned that Romania is
    going to have over two thousand daily cases in mid-September. The situation is expected
    to worsen as the Delta variant is becoming dominant. On the other hand, people’s
    interest in vaccination remains low with only 5.1 million fully vaccinated
    Romanians since the beginning of the country’s vaccine rollout in late
    December.






    PULL-OUT The United States last night
    completed the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan putting an end to the
    longest war in the country’s history. The last US plane took off at the end of
    a two-week evacuation operation complicated by the unexpected Taliban takeover
    of capital Kabul. During the 20 year war, 25 hundred US servicemen and over 1,000
    allied troops, including 27 Romanians have been killed in the line of duty.
    According to Reuters 24 thousand Afghans have also lost their lives. In 2014,
    NATO and the USA put an end to war operations in Afghanistan, but foreign
    soldiers remained stationed in that country for another 6 years. The withdrawal
    was set through an agreement signed with the Taliban in February 2020. The
    Taliban got Kabul in mid-August, which caused panic among the Afghans who
    wanted to leave the country. 120 thousand people have been evacuated in two
    weeks in an operation marked by chaos and tragedies, stampedes, suicide and
    rocket attacks. The Taliban are
    celebrating the victory but the country is in for a difficult period of time
    with assets of 9 billion dollars frozen and an economic and humanitarian crisis
    looming large.






    DAY The Romanian language will
    continue to keep us united and close to the country, Romanian president Klaus
    Iohannis says in his message on Romanian Language Day celebrated every year on
    August 31st. Iohannis has congratulated all those contributing to
    the cultivation and the promotion of the Romanian language and values who are
    working in several fields of activity such as literature, science and research,
    academia, and various publishing houses. For the Romanian nationals living
    abroad, their native tongue is what makes them feel at home wherever they are
    and in a Diaspora as large, the language’s linking role is more important than
    ever. Dear Romanians from all over the world, do not stop loving the Romanian
    language and try to cultivate the love of it among children so that they may
    appreciate it and use it correctly, the president went on to say.






    MEETING EU interior ministers are
    convening today in Brussels for talks over the situation in Afghanistan after
    the Taliban takeover and assess the impact of a potential wave of migrants from
    that country over the continent. According to news agencies, the EU governments
    want to avoid a repeat of the chaotic migratory wave of 2015, which took the
    bloc by surprise causing division among its states. Some European countries
    fear that Afghanistan may become home to terrorist groups who may mastermind attacks
    against the West as it happened on September 11th 2001 in the USA. The EU
    ministers are going to assess the ways of evacuating the Afghans who worked
    with EU countries and are now expecting reprisals from the Taliban. According
    to Romanian Interior Minister, Lucian Bode, the country can receive Afghan
    refugees, upon a thorough checking from the state’s structures.






    TENNIS Romanian
    tennis player Sorana Cirstea is today playing Veronika Kudermetova of Russia in
    the first round of the US Open, the year’s last Grand Slam. Another three
    Romanians on the competition’s main draw, Irina Begu, Ana Bogdan and Gabriela
    Ruse lost the matches they played on Monday, in the competition’s inaugural
    round. Romania’s best representative in the prestigious competition, Simona
    Halep, a former world’s number one, has qualified for the competition’s second
    round after a win against Italian Camila Giorgi and will next be playing
    Kristina Kucova of Slovakia.






    EVENTS A
    series of cultural events simultaneously staged in Romania and the Republic of
    Moldova, an ex-soviet Romanian-speaking country on Tuesday, August 31st
    marked the Romanian Language Day. President Klaus Iohannis has hailed the
    efforts made by a series of institutions to maintain the access of Romanians to
    leaning their mother tongue. Set in 2013 by Parliament in Bucharest, the
    Romanian Language Day coincides with the national day of the Republic of
    Moldova and is an homage paid to the national awakening movement in the
    neighboring country. On August 31st 1989, while still under Soviet
    occupation, Parliament in Chisinau, surrounded by 750 thousand people, a sixth
    of the Republic’s population at that time, declared Romanian a state language
    and replaced the Cyrillic alphabet, imposed by the occupants, with the Latin
    one.




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