April 8, 2022

Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 08.04.2022, 13:49

MINISTER Romania’s former Minister of Tourism Elena Udrea will
today be taken to a court in Bulgaria as part of the procedures to extradite
her to Romania. She was apprehended on Thursday night close to the border with
Greece, after the authorities in Bucharest had put out an APB on her. Elena
Udrea had left the country on Thursday morning right before getting the court’s
six-year prison sentence for bribery and abuse in office in the Bute Boxing
Gala case. Border police said the former minister legally left the country as
no interiction had been issued before her departure. We’ll revert to the topic
after the news.

UKRAINE The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen and the head
of the EU diplomacy Josep Borell are today travelling to Kyiv for talks with
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. On Thursday the UN General Assembly
voted for suspending Russia from the UN Council of Human Rights for severe and
repeated human rights violations. 93 countries have voted in favour of the
resolution proposed by the USA, 24 countries were against it and 58 abstained.
The decision has been made after the discovery of hundreds of dead, many with
torture marks, and summary executions in the regions recaptured by the
Ukrainian troops. Russia denies that its troops have killed civilians. The
Kremlin says the decision to suspend Russia from the aforementioned UN council
is illegal and politically-motivated. Russia steps up its attacks in Ukraine’s
southern and eastern regions while Ukrainians are trying to evacuate the
citizens in the regions affected by the war. Two Russian missiles have hit a railway
station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk killing 30 people and wounding
another 100, the Ukraine’s railway company has today announced. The station was
used in the evacuation of refugees from the areas bombed by the Russian troops.
In another development, the mayor of Mariupol says that over 100 thousand
people must be urgently evacuated from the city. On Thursday, the World Health
Organisation confirmed over 100 attacks against health services in Ukraine and
called for the access of humanitarian convoys to this city currently besieged
by the Russian troops.

DECISION In its session today, the second this week, the government in Bucharest
is deciding ways in which the Romanian citizens who are hosting Ukrainian
refugees may benefit from discounts. The hosts must fill in an application with
the local public authorities specifying the number of people they host, their
surnames and Christian names, and the period of time they offer accommodation
to the refugees. The Romanians who are hosting Ukrainian refugees can get up to
14 Euros per person per day. Since Russia started its invasion of Ukraine, 650
thousand Ukrainian nationals have entered Romania.

GROWTH Romania last year registered a 5.9% economic growth as compared to 2020
– according to the latest provisional figures published by the National
Institute for Statistics INS. Data reveals a smaller contribution of investment
to economic growth last year, from 0.9% to 0.6 %. The INS data has also
revealed a 0.1% drop in the last quarter of 2021 as compared to the previous
one.

COVID-19 Over 17 hundred new Covid-19 infections have been reported in
Romania today, a lower number than the previous day. Authorities have also
announced 9-related fatalities and over 21 hundred people are presently in
hospital care. 227 of them are being treated in ICU’s. At the same time the
number of flu infections is on the rise, doctors say and some of the cases
needed hospital treatment.

(bill)