6 August, 2019

Investigations continue into the Caracal killings./ Romanias government to make its first budget adjustment this year./ Romania's Simona Halep to face US's Jennifer Brady in Toronto tennis tournament.

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Newsroom, 06.08.2019, 13:25

Caracal killings. More detailed
searches are being conducted today in the Caracal case, where the
investigations into the disappearance of two teenage girls, 15-year-old Alexandra
Măceşanu, who went missing in July, and 18-year-old Luiza Melencu, who has been
missing since April, led to the arrest of a 66-year-old man, Gheorghe Dincă, who
has confessed to killing the two girls and burning their bodies. The ashes
collected at his home only showed traces of Alexandra Măceşanu’s DNA, the
teenager who went missing on the 24th of July and who the following
day managed to call the emergency hotline, with the authorities reaching her
location too late to be able to save her. Yesterday, in a forest near Caracal,
in southern Romania, investigators found, in a place indicated by Dincă, a bag
full of charred bone fragments and ash. Tests will be conducted to establish if
they belong to Luiza Melencu. The unacceptable series of mistakes made by the authorities
in this case has already led to dismissals and resignations.

Budget. The
government in Bucharest this week plans to make its first budget adjustment
this year. According to the finance ministry, this is a positive adjustment
that will ensure a budget deficit of 2.76%. More money will be allocated to the
ministry for regional development, the Romanian Intelligence Service and the
justice ministry. The finance ministry will also receive additional funds,
large part of which accounting for Romania’s contribution to the European Union
budget. The education ministry and the ministry of European funds and research
will see their budgets slashed. The finance ministry says the budget adjustment
bill ensures the necessary funds for pensions and salaries.

Communications. The
Romanian minister of communications and information society Alexandru Petrescu
is having talks in the US with the leadership of the main federal institutions
with responsibilities in the area of technological development and
communications, namely the State Department, the Federal Communications
Commission, the Department of Defence, the Cyber Security Agency, the National
Security Council and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration,
as well as with telecommunications operators and global providers of
communications equipment and technology. Petrescu’s talks focus on the
development of the communications sector, the intensification of international
communication in the field of information technology and the tightening of
cyber security.

Climate. July, which saw very high
temperatures in Europe, was the hottest in recorded history, as confirmed by
satellite data. The findings come from the Copernicus European programme for
climate change, whose experts say this is the most recent sign that the Earth
is seeing unprecedented warming. According to Copernicus, the average
temperature in July was 0.56 degrees Celsius higher than the average in the
period between 1981 and 2000 and 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial
levels, the UN experts’ reference basis for climate. July saw a brief but
intense period of extreme heat in Western Europe, where record high
temperatures were reported in countries like Germany, Belgium and Holland.
Temperatures were also above average in the Nordic areas such as Alaska,
Greenland and parts of Siberia, as well as Central Asia and regions in
Antarctica. The World Meteorological Organisation estimates that the period from 2015 to 2019 may be the five
hottest years on record.

Tennis. World
no. 4 Simona Halep of Romania faces Jennifer Brady of the US in her
opening match of the WTA tournament in Toronto, in Canada, worth 2.83 million
dollars. Brady, who is no. 76 in the world, on Monday defeated France’s Kristina
Mladenovic, world no. 50. Halep, who won the title in Toronto last year, will
be facing Brady for the first time on the professional circuit. In the doubles,
Halep and the 16-year-old Canadian player Leylah Fernandez are
playing against the seventh seeds Nicole Melichar of the US and Kveta Peschke of
the Czech Republic. Another Romanian player, Raluca Olaru, pairs up with
China’s Zhaoxuan Yang, facing the American-Latvian pair Sofia Kenin and
Anastasija Sevastova in the first round.