Radio România Internațional

Tag: interior

  • October 26, 2024

    October 26, 2024

     

    FEAST Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Christians today celebrate the Holy Great-Martyr Demetrius the Myroblyte, a Greek Christian martyr of the early 4th century AD. He was the proconsul of Thessalonica and as such he opposed the pagan celebrations occasioned by Roman military victories, subsequently arrested and forced to renounce his Christian beliefs, seen as dangerous for the unity of the Roman Empire. When he refused, he was run through with spears. His relics are kept today in a church in Thessaloniki.  Nearly 259,000 Romanians celebrate their name day today, according to the interior ministry. In Bucharest, a pilgrimage is taking place to the relics of St. Dimitrie Basarabov, the patron saint of Bucharest, and to the relics of St. Lazarus, brought over from Cyprus.

     

     

    SCHENGEN The Romanian interior minister, Cătălin Predoiu, had talks with his French counterpart Bruno Retailleau, on finalising the Schengen accession file and on topics of interest on the European and bilateral agenda, such as fighting illegal migration and drug trafficking. According to the Romanian interior ministry, the meeting is part of a series of talks with the EU countries with which Romania has strategic partnerships or privileged cooperation agreements, aimed at communicating the outcomes of the measures taken by Bucharest to manage migration and ensure border security in the context of the country’s efforts to fully join the border-free Schengen area. Cătălin Predoiu highlighted the measures taken at both national level and jointly with its immediate neighbours and other EU member states, which resulted in a decrease of migratory pressures on Romania’s borders to nearly zero. Romania’s cooperation with European agencies also played a major role in achieving these outstanding results. Romania aims to complete the case by the end of this year, and is relying on the support of all its allies to meet this important national goal. The French official acknowledged the progress made by Romania and reiterated France’s support for this goal to be reached as soon as possible.

     

     

    MIDDLE EAST Washington called on Iran not to retaliate following last night’s Israeli air raids. Should Tehran choose to strike back, we will be prepared and there will be consequences, the US Administration warned. Meanwhile, Israel announced that its operations in Iran were over, after 3 rounds of attacks on military targets, particularly the defence system and arms production facilities. On the other hand, Iran says the strike was countered and that damages were limited. The international community had been anticipating this operation for about a month, as a response to Iran’s missile attack on October 1. The Pentagon said it had been informed of the strike, but denied any American military involvement. The US had urged Israel not to target nuclear sites or oil fields, a request that was observed by Israel. On its part, Iraq reopened its air space after a 4-hour suspension due to security concerns.

     

     

    WINTER TIME Romania switches to winter time tonight, with clocks set one hour behind so that 4 am becomes 3 am, as a form of daylight saving time. A public poll conducted by the European Commission a few years ago indicates that most Europeans are against the change. In Germany, a teachers’ association said the move has a negative impact on the human body and causes stress, especially in families with school kids. The EC considered eliminating the shift, but member states failed to agree on which of the times should be kept. A number of states have given up switches between winter and summer time, such as Mexico in 2022 and Turkey in 2016. Ukraine also decided that as of 2025 it will no longer switch to Daylight Saving Time. (AMP)

  • “Interior/Exterior” – a contemporary dance show

    “Interior/Exterior” – a contemporary dance show

    Oana Rasuceanu collaborated on the
    show with the film director Iulia Rugină. The show proposes an introspective
    look into the lives of four female characters and into the world of their
    emotions and experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The show is
    based on documented interviews conducted by the two artists during the lockdown
    period and proposes to the spectators a reinterpretation and an analysis of
    those emotions, of our experiences, of everybody’s emotions actually. We spoke
    with the director about the show’s artistic concept, about her vision
    translated into the show. Here is Oana Răsuceanu:




    Oana Rasuceanu: ‘Interior/Exterior’ is a show
    that talks about the existence, let’s say slightly shaken, of four female
    characters, who end up being trapped in something that we were all trapped in
    the period March to May 2020. And I am referring to the state of emergency, the
    lockdown, the pandemic, the onset of the pandemic in Romania. My thoughts about
    this show were generated by several states, bizarre states, ambiguous states,
    anxiety, questions about what it was like for us, all of us, at that time. And
    I also thought of how we can actually get back to that period, after these
    years that have passed, years which did not erase, though, the respective
    experience, but on the contrary. I have had this feeling that what these years
    that have passed did to us was to put a magnifying glass on certain types of
    scars, which, I think, everyone feels. I also think that some of us decided to
    let these scars be visible, becoming aware of them eventually, while others simply
    decided that it is better to hide these scars in a drawer and lock them there
    for good. The show kicked off from here to further convey this message and
    we eventually made it to a point where we actually realized that there is video
    that we have. And I am using the plural here, as I speak about me and Iulia
    Rugina. During the pandemic lockdown in May last year, we decided to do a
    series of interviews via the Zoom platform, as nobody was allowed to leave
    their places. So we had a series of talks with various people in our life, some
    of them close to us because we felt like documenting that unique moment, which
    none of us had experienced before. And that unrefined material proved to be
    extremely valuable and I believe its value is going to increase from one year
    to another. We used only parts of these talks and some of the interviews we got
    from women. We held talks with males and females with ages ranging from 10 to
    70 years and from all these we have chosen four females who were to become
    active characters in this show intertwined with the live performances of the
    four protagonists.




    The screenwriter, choreographer and
    director of the show has also talked to us about the four performers, their
    work and transcending emotions. Here is Oana Răsuceanu at the microphone again:




    Oana Rasuceanu: The four performers are Mariana
    Gavriciuc, Anastasia Preotu, Teodora Velescu and Eva Danciu and I started
    working with them on four scripts I have written for the 4 live female
    performances. I felt the need of a common denominator when I started building the
    moving performance of these four bodies, beginning with biographic data, states,
    thoughts, social status etc identified for each of the four. I felt that the movement and the construction
    of the movement phrases should combine the emotional and social trajectory of
    those characters until the beginning of the state of emergency. Then it was the
    process of their transformation over the two months and the moment it ends and
    when they got the false feeling they could simply resume life from that moment on
    as if nothing had happened. It was something of extreme falsity and we were quite
    captive in that moment of falsehood, which we didn’t realize at first but were
    able to see very clearly after a couple of months or years. Since then, I myself
    have been experiencing some sort of an anxiety, the need to be always on guard.
    Somehow to me, the entire period of the pandemic seems to be a big question
    mark hanging over our tomorrow. And I believe this feeling has been pervasive
    throughout the entire show because there is this uncertainty of tomorrow, you
    know, the feeling that you are in complete darkness. I tried to make this
    darkness visible, so to say, but certainly many of us and the four performers
    at that, have eventually accepted the situation and there is nothing we can do,
    so we must move on. This is the thing I have done, the thing they do, and many
    of us have done, a step ‘forward’, no matter where this forward will take us.


    (LS & bill)

  • October 4, 2022 UPDATE

    October 4, 2022 UPDATE

    ESPIONAGE Prosecutors with the Directorate Investigating Organised
    Crime and Terrorism Offences (DIICOT) have indicted 4 Romanian and foreign
    nationals as part of an espionage inquiry targeting the Serbian company NIS
    Petrol, a subsidiary of the Russian energy giant Gazprom. Prosecutors have
    ordered searches in Bucharest and Timișoara, both at the company headquarters, and
    at the homes of a number of employees, confiscating documents and data storage devices.
    The four are accused of having traded classified information and of
    facilitating the unauthorised transfer of data concerning Romania’s mineral reserves,
    prosecutors say. In 2009, Gazprom bought the majority stake in NIS under an
    agreement signed by Belgrade and Moscow.


    ECONOMY Romania’s economy
    is expected to grow by 4.6% this year, the World Bank announced on Tuesday. The
    estimate is better than the one made public in June, when the figure only
    stood at 2.9%. The improvement is based on robust private consumption and early
    signs that investments would pick up, but the outlook depends on the
    developments in Ukraine and their impact on the European economy on the whole,
    the institution says.


    MOTION USR Deputies, in opposition, together with MPs from the Force
    of the Right, have tabled a simple motion in the Chamber of Deputies against
    the interior minister Lucian Bode, whom they accuse of incompetence and
    protecting party interests. The USR leader Cătălin Drulă says Bode must answer,
    among other things, to allegations that the Romanian Police purchased new cars
    through public procurement procedures that favoured companies linked to the Liberal
    Party. Bode is also criticised for failing to reach a number of targets,
    including the electronic monitoring of offenders and the interior
    ministry reform. The motion will be discussed and voted on next Tuesday.


    LEGISLATION A draft law regulating the judge and prosecutor
    professions was endorsed on Tuesday in the Chamber of Deputies. The bill had
    passed all the required stages of the legislative process, including the approval
    of the Higher Council of Magistrates, the justice minister Cătălin Predoiu said.
    The act was criticised however by the USR and AUR parties, in opposition. The
    decision-making body in this case is the Senate. The bill is the 3rd
    normative act in a law package regulating the judiciary, next to one on the
    Higher Council of Magistrates and the organisation of courts, which have
    already been endorsed by the Chamber of Deputies.


    FUNDING Romania may get about EUR 1.5 billion for energy
    independence projects and for fighting energy poverty, following the
    endorsement of the REpowerEU plan by the Economic and Financial Council in
    Luxembourg. Romania is the 6th EU member state to benefit from the
    new funding, said the finance minister Adrian Câciu. He explained that during
    negotiations the funding earmarked for Romania practically doubled compared to
    the original proposal made by the European Commission this May.



    NOBEL The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to
    Alain Aspect (France), John F. Clauser (USA) and Anton Zeillinger (Austria) for
    their revolutionary experiments with entangled photons, establishing the
    violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.
    Their findings have laid the foundation for a new era of quantum technology. (AMP)

  • March 3, 2020

    March 3, 2020

    HEARINGS The ministers nominated in PM designate Florin Cîţus cabinet are interviewed by the specialised parliamentary committees today, on Wednesday and Thursday, and the day of the investiture vote is to be chosen early next week. The only change compared to the Ludovic Orban Government is at the finance ministry, where former minister Cîţu has been replaced with Lucian Ovidiu Heiuş. The president of Save Romania Union, Dan Barna, says the Liberals have not asked explicitly for support for the new cabinet. The leader of the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians, Kelemen Hunor, says that no decision has been made yet as to endorsing the new government or not. Pro Romania MPs will attend the parliamentary sitting, but will vote against the cabinet, party leader Victor Ponta announced. The Social Democrats and ALDE were the only parties with which the PM designate has not discussed. The Peoples Movement Party decided to vote in favour of the Cîţu Cabinet. The latters nomination by president Klaus Iohannis came after the Constitutional Court found it unconstitutional for the president to designate the interim PM Ludovic Orban to form a new cabinet after being dismissed by Parliament through a no-confidence vote.



    COVID-19 In Romania, 42 people are in quarantine centres and over 9,400 are under home monitoring, the Strategic Communication Group announced on Tuesday. So far 3 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in Romania, one of whom has recovered and the other 2 are hospitalised and in a good state. Meanwhile, the National Emergency Committee has introduced strict quarantine rules for the people returning home from risk areas. The new coronavirus is now spreading a lot more quickly outside China than in the source country. Around 91,000 cases have been confirmed in over 70 countries worldwide. Of these, 48,000 patients recovered and over 3,100 died. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank announced they are ready to provide help, including emergency funds, for member states to tackle the difficulties caused by the quickly spreading epidemic.



    VACCINATION The healthcare committee in the Chamber of Deputies unanimously voted the introduction of an amendment making immunisation mandatory. The Chamber of Deputies is to cast the decisive vote on the bill. Representatives of the Parents Alliance, of Pro Consumers Association and of the “Informed Decisions Association protested the current form of the bill, opposing the idea of compulsory vaccination. They believe each citizen must have the right to decide as concerns their own body. On the other hand, an association called Mothers for Mothers warns that vaccination saves lives and the body of scientific evidence in this respect goes back over a century.



    INTERIOR MINISTRY The interim interior minister Marcel Vela has today presented the institutions annual report, and said in 2019 the work load of interior ministry staff was higher than in the previous year. Marcel Vela explained that 27 counties and the capital city Bucharest reported over 4% rises in street crime and crimes against persons and property. “The presidential election was well organised, with 30% fewer incidents in the first round and 54.18% fewer incidents in the second round than in 2014, Marcel Vela added. The National Police Union organised a protest concurrently with the meeting at the ministry headquarters. They demand the implementation of current regulations regarding salaries, and the payment of overdue benefits for the last 3 years.



    UNEMPLOYMENT The January unemployment rate in Romania was 3.9%, down 0.1% since December, the National Statistics Institute announced in Tuesday. According to the institution, the estimated number of unemployed people in January was 350,000, which is lower than both the previous month and the corresponding month of 2019. Statistics also indicate that in the first month of the year the unemployment rate among men was 1% higher than among women.



    ISRAEL The Israeli PM Beniamin Netanyahu claimed victory in the 3rd election within a year, held on Monday. With 90% of the votes counted, Netanyahus right-wing party Likud secured 35 out of the 120 seats in Parliament, as against 32 for Kahol Lavan, led by his challenger Benny Gantz. None of them however has the required majority to form a government. Netanyahu tried to secure his re-election while facing a corruption trial. In his address, Netanyahu promised to put an end to the Iranian nuclear threat, to build peace with moderate Arab countries, economic reforms, a defence pact with the USA, and also spoke about his proposal to annex settlements in the West Bank.


    (translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)