August 2, 2014 UPDATE
A roundup of domestic and international news
Valentin Țigău, 02.08.2014, 19:28
The Congress of the Reforming Liberal Party convened in Bucharest on Saturday to decide on the new structure of the party and its candidate in the presidential election. As a result of the votes cast by the delegates, the Speaker of the Senate of Romania Calin Popescu Tariceanu was elected the new president of the party, as well as the candidate in the presidential election due this November.
Palestinian officials in Gaza say 200 Palestinians were killed on Friday and Saturday in Israeli shelling, launched after the 72-hour ceasefire was broken. According to the BBC, the heaviest attacks took place in Rafah, where Israeli officials believe the Hamas fighters captured an Israeli soldier. Violence continued in Gaza, between the Israeli army and the Palestinian militant group, in spite of preparations for negotiations in Egypt.
OSCE officials have announced that the international observers in east Ukraine, where the MH17 Malaysian plane with 298 people on board crashed last month, were forced to leave the site because of the bombings, AFP reports. Previosuly the US president, Barack Obama, asked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, in a phone conversation, to no longer support the pro-Russian separatists in east Ukraine. In turn, Vladimir Putin told Barack Obama that the economic sanctions, which suspend the access of Russian state-owned banks to the European capital market and ban deliveries of military equipment and technology, were counterproductive.
