Radio România Internațional

Tag: vessel

  • April 17, 2022

    April 17, 2022

    EASTER Catholic and
    Protestant Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Christ. At the
    Vatican, Pope Francis once again called for peace, describing Easter as the
    gift of hope during the Mass held in a basilica with thousands of believers.
    Today, the service takes place in San Pietro Square after 2 years of
    Covid-related restrictions. For Orthodox and Greek-Catholic believers, who
    celebrate Easter next weekend, today is Palm Sunday, commemorating the moment
    when Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem. In Romania, a mostly Orthodox country,
    nearly one and a half million people are celebrating their name day. President
    Klaus Iohannis wished happy and peaceful holidays to all those who celebrate
    Easter or Palm Sunday today.


    UKRAINE As of midnight
    Russian vessels are no longer allowed to enter EU ports, Romanian ports
    included. The ban also covers ships that replaced the Russian flag with the
    colours of another state after February 24 when the war in Ukraine started, but
    not those which need assistance or shelter for safety reasons or those which
    have saved lives at the sea. In an interview to Sunday’s issue of the German
    magazine Bild am Sonntag, the head of the European Commission Ursula von der
    Leyen said the next stage of EU sanctions will target Russia’s oil and banking
    sectors, particularly the country’s largest bank, Sberbank. She added that
    Brussels was working on smart mechanisms to include Russian oil in the new list
    of sanctions, so as to reduce the financing for Vladimir Putin’s invasion army.
    EU member states are currently paying for Russian gas and oil via Sberbank and
    Gazprombank, which have so far been exempt from Europe’s sanctions, Reuters
    explains. Meanwhile, Russia carries on attacks on several cities in Ukraine,
    including the capital Kyiv, in response to the sinking of its Black Sea
    flagship, the Moskva. According to Radio Romania’s correspondent in
    Ukraine, Russian forces shelled several cities in the south of Ukraine, whereas
    in Herson Ukrainian troops continue to attack the occupying Russian forces.


    REFUGEES The number of Ukrainian nationals who reached
    Romania on Saturday was 12.4% higher than on the previous days, the Romanian
    border police announced. Since the start of the crisis, over 730,000 Ukrainian
    citizens have entered the country, most of them leaving Romania for other
    destinations.


    INVICTUS A group of 20 Romanian military wounded in battle
    fields are taking part in the one-week long Invictus Games, hosted his year by
    The Hague in the Netherlands. They will compete in 7 sports, 6 of them
    individual competitions (hand archery, athletics,
    rowing, powerlifting, cycling and swimming) and a team sport (sitting volleyball). The Invictus Games promote respect
    and empathy for the sacrifice and traumas of wounded military, whose
    involvement in these activities is an opportunity for social reintegration and
    for regaining self-confidence, the Romanian Defence Ministry says. For Romanian
    troops, this year’s Invictus participation is the third, after the ones in Toronto,
    in 2017, and Sydney, one year later.


    DIPLOMACY The Romanian Foreign Ministry celebrates 25 years
    since the Joint Statement on the Romania-Italy Strategic Partnership was
    signed. The genuine friendship between the 2 countries is facilitated by the
    presence of over 1 million Romanians in Italy, making up the largest foreign
    community in that country and also the largest Romanian community abroad, reads
    a news release issued by the institution.


    NORTH KOREA North Korea announced
    the successful test firing of a new type of tactical guided weapon aimed at
    boosting the country’s nuclear capabilities, which may indicate that Pyongyang
    is ready to resume nuclear testing. North Korea suspended nuclear testing in 2017,
    and the following year it blew up the tunnels in its underground nuclear test
    site, but recent satellite imagery indicates digging and construction
    activities have been resumed.(AMP)

  • September 23, 2021 UPDATE

    September 23, 2021 UPDATE

    COVID-19 The COVID-19 epidemic stays on an upward
    trend in Romania. Thursday was the second consecutive day with more than 7,000 new
    cases in 24 hours (7,095 new cases out of nearly 54,000 tests). The largest
    number of infections is reported in the capital Bucharest. The number of Covid
    patients in intensive care is now over 1,000, a situation last seen in early
    May in Romania, and the number of coronavirus-related deaths was 113. Over
    300 towns and villages in the country are now on the red list of places where
    the infection rate is over 3 per thousand. Meanwhile, the total number of vaccine doses
    administered to Romanians went over 10 million on Thursday.


    MEASURES The COVID digital certificate remains a requirement for
    access to indoor events in places with infection rates of over 3 per thousand, and
    it will be compulsory for children over 12, instead of over 6 as originally
    stipulated. Another measure allows businesses to stay open after 6pm, in places
    with infection rates between 3 and 6 per thousand. A night curfew will be in
    place over weekends wherever the infection rate is over 6 per thousand, and
    throughout the week in places with infection rates above 7.5 per thousand. PM
    Florin Cîţu also announced today that vaccinated people will be allowed to
    leave their homes without a sworn statement in places under curfew or lockdown.
    Meanwhile, an emergency order on the COVID
    digital certificate has been endorsed by the Senate and is next to be discussed
    in the Chamber of Deputies. The digital certificate was created at EU level to
    facilitate free travel during the pandemic. The document, which includes a QR
    code, certifies that the holder has been vaccinated, recovered from the disease
    or tested negative for COVID.


    AMBASSADOR
    Romania has been a candidate for accession to the Visa Waiver programme for
    almost 15 years, said the new Romanian ambassador to Washington, Andrei Muraru,
    who mentioned that there are only three EU member states whose citizens need a
    short-stay visa on US territory. According to Andrei Muraru, the visa rejection
    rate is currently at a fairly high level, around 10%, but he pointed out that
    Romanian and US authorities are working to bring it down to the maximum 3% allowed
    for the Visa Waiver. The Romanian ambassador to the US also said that an
    information campaign will be organized in Bucharest for citizens to find out
    how they can apply for a visa, why their applications are turned down and why
    they should not apply if they do not meet the criteria set by the American
    side.


    NAVY The
    Romanian Navy’s Vice-admiral Constantin Bălescu Minelayer will take part in
    the EUNAVFOR MED operation Irini, in the Mediterranean Sea, between
    the 1st of October and the end of this year. Romanian marines will
    ensure compliance with the arms embargo enforced by the UN on Libya. The
    mission also targets illegal trafficking in oil products, drugs and people, by
    monitoring sea traffic and inspections of suspicious vessels in the
    Mediterranean. A combat diver unit is on board, and the 85 crew members have
    been tested, vaccinated against COVID-19 and isolated in Romanian Navy
    facilities prior to the operation.


    INSURANCE The government passed an emergency order enabling drivers who need to
    have their cars repaired under an insurance policy issued by City Insurance to
    receive their claims more quickly under the Insurance Guarantee Fund. They will
    no longer have to wait for a court to declare the company bankrupt. When its
    license was cancelled, City Insurance had 3 million civil liability policies
    issued to car owners. The Prosecutor General’s Office Thursday had documents
    seized from the company headquarters, as part of a criminal investigation
    following a complaint filed by the Financial Supervising Authority.


    INFRINGEMENT The European Commission Thursday sent Romania and Poland letters of
    formal notice for not correctly incorporating certain aspects of the Offshore
    Safety Directive into their legal systems. These letters of formal notice are
    actually the official start of the infringement procedure. Romania and Poland
    have two months to address the shortcomings, otherwise the Commission may decide to
    send a reasoned opinion. Also on Thursday, the
    Commission took measures against 19 member states, Romania included, for
    failing to take the necessary steps to ensure their citizens benefit from the
    EU audio-visual mass media and telecoms legislation. (tr. A.M. Popescu)

  • The history of the Romanian navy

    The history of the Romanian navy

    The Romanian military navy was established rather late, in the second half of the 19th century. We recall that back then the south-eastern province of Dobrogea was integrated into then the Romanian Kingdom in the wake of the independence war of 1877-1878. The Romanian navy evolved around an icon: the Mircea brig, designed and used, from the very beginning, as a training ship. The Mircea brig would soon become a legendary vessel. It sailed into the Romanian Black Seas territorial waters at a time when all the countrys institutions developed following a predominantly Western pattern, at once going through a process of modernization. And that included the Romanian navy.



    The legend of the Mircea brig, baptized with that name as a tribute to the medieval ruler Mircea the Elder, actually has two parts: there were in fact two vessels, which were iconic for two development stages in Romanian navy. The first ship, the original one, reached Romania in 1882. It was a brig in its own right. The second ship, which is functional to this day, was a bark-type sailboat. It was also known as Mircea, so the collective mindset associates the latter vessel with the original brig.



    Mircea Tarhoaca is the current commander of Mircea training ship.



    Mircea Tarhoaca:



    “The Mircea brig was a two-masted ship built in a shipyard nearby London. It had been used by the Royal Navy of that time as a training ship for the training of the new generations of naval officers. It was used until about the mid-1920s when those responsible realized the needs of the navy were sensibly greater, so a much bigger ship was needed, therefore todays Mircea brig was commissioned at the Hamburg shipyard, known as Blohm und Voss. The vessel is one of the four other sister ships that are still operational. Only one of them was turned into a museum, in a town in northern Germany. Each ship, that including the one were speaking about today, has had historical voyages. The present-day ship, in its 82-year old history, crossed the Atlantic Ocean three times. The first voyage was the one in 1976, when it participated in the United States Bicentennial, 200 years were celebrated since the United States Declaration of Independence had been signed. Then it was in 2004, while the last voyage we had was the one in 2009, when I took part in it myself, in my capacity as a training officer.”



    Todays training ship is a Class A bark-type sailboat. It is 43 meters tall, it has 23 sails with a spread of sails of 1,700 square meters all told. It was built between 1938 and 1939. May 17, 1939 was the day it sailed into the port of Constanta for the first time. Then, as well as now, the forepart of the ship had the image of Mircea the Elder, clad in a red blouse and a red cloak and wearing the princely crown. Generation after generation of cadets after the next has been trained on board this ship.



    Commander Mircea Tarhoaca:


    “It has been a training vessel since 1939. It saw better days, it saw worse days, sometimes, according to the course of events in history. For instance, in 1946, the ship was requisitioned by the Russians, but was given back later. It saw periods of time when it had undergone major repair and modernization works. For instance, in 1966 in the very ship yard where it was built, then in the year 2000, when repair works were performed in Braila shipyard. But each year, or something like that, the ship was placed in a shipyard and underwent modernization operations. We may be 82 years old, yet we have on-board modern equipment that meets the present demands of instruction and training for the Naval Academy students.



    The Mircea training ship has an accommodation capacity for a 200-strong crew, of which half can be cadets. In 2019, when it turned 80, the famous sailboat set sail on its initial historical voyage once again. However, this time the Mircea brig sailed from Constanta to the shipyard in Hamburg, where it was born.


  • August 2, 2021

    August 2, 2021

    COVID-19 The number of new Covid-19
    cases in Romania is growing. Last week, the total number of infections was almost two-thirds higher
    than in the previous week. On Monday 137 new cases were reported out of 12,600
    tests. The number of coronavirus patients in hospitals stays at over 400, with
    the number of patients in ICUs also slightly on the rise in recent days. Five
    new COVID-related deaths have also been reported. In spite of the warnings
    regarding an imminent new wave of infections, the vaccination rate dropped
    slightly last week. Romania has only now managed to get 5 million people vaccinated,
    a target originally set for early June.




    ATTACK Romania firmly condemns and describes as utterly unacceptable last Thursdays drone attack on the oil tanker Mercer Street off the coast of Oman, which killed 2 people, including the ships Romanian captain, the foreign ministry says in a news release. According to the ministry, given that information presented by Romanias international partners indicates that the attack was deliberate and was coordinated from Iran, Romania requests the Iranian authorities to provide explanations regarding the incident. Irans ambassador to Bucharest was invited to an emergency discussion at the ministry. Meanwhile, the US and UK announced they were joining Israel and preparing a quick and coordinated response. Tehran in turn denies the accusations, which it dismisses as ungrounded.




    COMMEMORATION The 2nd of August is National Roma Holocaust Remembrance Day in Romania, marked since 2020. The Romanian Foreign Ministry pays tribute to the Roma Holocaust victims and emphasizes that the suffering of the Roma in Nazi concentration camps during WWII was for a long time unknown to the general public, which helped propagate prejudice against this community. According to the final report of the International Committee Studying the Holocaust in Romania, around 11,000 Roma ethnics died, out of the nearly 25,000 deported in Transdniester, a Russian-speaking breakaway region in todays Republic of Moldova. Also, on 2 August 1944, around 3,000 Roma were killed in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. A total of 500,000 ethnic Roma were killed in Europe during the Holocaust.




    WILDFIRES Entire sections of Mediterranean and Aegean Sea resorts are being evacuated and thousands of hectares of vegetation are burning in the south of Europe, from Italy to Turkey. Firefighters have been struggling to contain the wildfires for nearly a week, but temperatures of over 42 degrees Celsius and strong wind are making the intervention particularly difficult. Eight people died in Turkey, where an entire neighbourhood in the high-end resort of Bodrum has been evacuated. In Greece as well, the north-west of the Peloponnese peninsula, near the town of Patras, is in the grips of wildfires, and so are the regions Sicily, Puglia, Calabria, Lazio and Campania in Italy.




    CANOE The Romanians Cătălin Chirilă and Victor Mihalachi have today qualified into the semi-finals of the canoeing 1,000m doubles race at the Tokyo Olympics, after coming in third in the quarter-finals. Cătălin Chirilă and Victor Mihalachi won the bronze medal in this years European Championships in Poznan, while Mihalachi also won 2 world championships in this event, in 2010 and 2014. Over the years, kayaking and canoeing have brought Romania 34 Olympic medals, 10 of them gold, 10 silver and 14 bronze. However, Romanian athletes last won an Olympic medal in Sydney, 21 years ago. (tr. A.M. Popescu)