August 19, 2018

A roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 19.08.2018, 13:20

PROTEST – The Army Prosecutor’s
Office in Bucharest has so far registered 260 criminal complaints against gendarmes,
filed by participants in the August 10th anti-government protest.
The gendarmes are accused of abusive intervention during the demonstration. As
of Monday, claims and complaints will be received at the General Prosecutor’s
Office, which will initiate the necessary criminal proceedings. Army
prosecutors have opened a prosecution file for abusive behavior and professional
misconduct in relation to the intervention of the gendarme forces during the
protest. Ionel Corbu, Chief Prosecutor of the Army Prosecutor’s Office with the
Bucharest Military Tribunal, has stated that the aggression displayed was not
justified, as there were other means that could be used instead. On Saturday,
dozens of people marked in Bucharest one week since the violence of August 10th.

ITALY – The Romanian Foreign
Ministry has announced the death of the second Romanian caught in the collapse
of the Morandi road bridge in Italy. Representatives of the Romanian consular
team, who travelled to Genoa, are in permanent contact with the family and is
ready to provide the necessary assistance. According to Reuters, the search
operations ended on Saturday night, and the official death toll stands at 43. Saturday
was a day of national mourning in Italy, but half of the victims’ families
decided to boycott the official ceremony in Genoa in protest against the
Government. The Italian Government holds the operator of the motorway that
included the Morandi bridge responsible for the tragedy. The leadership of the
company responsible for the management of the bridge has announced it will
allocate 500 million Euros for reconstruction and other projects aimed to aid
the city. The families of the 40 victims will get millions in damages and the
company will also pay for the relocation of those who were living in the
buildings under the bridge.

CYBER ATTACK – The Romanian
Intelligence Service has announced that it possesses intelligence according to
which large-scale cyber attacks were perpetrated against financial institutions
in Romania in the June-August 2018 period. The American banks too had received
warnings from the FBI that certain hackers were prepared to attack ATMs and
payment processing devices. The Romanian Intelligence Service has stated that
the hackers use several attack methods, including the Cobalt Strike arsenal,
associated with a cyber-crime group in Eastern Europe.

TALKS – The German chancellor
Angela Merkel and the Russian President Vladimir Putin have made no real
progress with regard to the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, the relations with
Iran and the North Stream 2 gas pipelines, the issues that the two officials
discussed on Saturday night, Reuters reports. The two leaders met in a formal
bilateral meeting for the first time since the annexation of Crimea by Russia.
After the talks, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peksov told the press that no
agreement was reached following the discussions held at the Meseberg castle, north
of Berlin. He stated that both Merkel and Putin believed the North Stream 2
project was purely commercial, despite opposition from both the US and Ukraine.
The pipeline should be rendered operation in late 2019, and would supply Europe
with Russian natural gas, going round Ukraine. This project, initiated by
Moscow, is being implemented despite the EU’s energy strategy to reduce the
dependence on gas imported from Russia.

TENNIS – The Romanian tennis
player Simona Halep, world’s no.1, has qualified for the final of the WTA
tournament in Cincinnati, Ohio, with approximately 3 million dollars in prize
money, after defeating on Friday 6-3, 6-4 Arina Sabalenka of Belarus. The
Romanian player, who is the tournament’s first seed, will play the final match
against the Dutch Kiki Bertens, no 17 in the WTA rankings. To Simona, the
Cincinnati final will be the 33rd in her career, whose record
includes 18 titles won so far. In another move, the pair made up of the
Romanian Horia Tecau and the Dutch Jean-Julien Rojer failed to qualify for the
final of the doubles competition of the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 in
Cincinnati. They were defeated on Saturday by the British-Brazilian pair Jamie
Murray – Bruno Soares.