August 23, 2023 UPDATE

Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 23.08.2023, 20:36

MAE Romania’s
Foreign Minister Luminita Odobescu has accused Russia of intentionally harming
the Ukrainian civilians and of damaging the infrastructure needed in the
country’s grain exports. The Romanian official has reacted to the latest
Russian attack against the Ukrainian port on the Danube, Ismail, and has
described these actions as war crimes. In a post on the X network, formerly
known as Twitter, Odobescu says she is terrified by the Russian continuous
attacks against the aforementioned port close to Romania. Russia’s repeated strikes
on Ukraine’s maritime and river ports have destroyed 270 thousand tons of grain
in a month, the Ukrainian Minister of the Infrastructure, Oleksandr Kubrakov
has said.

FIRE The Romanian
firefighters deployed to Greece on Wednesday were requested to participate in a
mission of putting out wild fires close to the highway to Alexandroupolis. 50
firefighters and 10 fire engines have participated in the mission, says a communique
issued by the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations in Bucharest. The
situation of wildfires in Greece has been monitored from space by means of the
European Satellite Programme Copernicus.

CRASH Four high police officials in
the county of Constanta, south-eastern Romania, have been dismissed after a
19-year-old driver under the influence of several types of drugs killed two people
and wounded three others. The young man was stopped by the road police three
hours before the accident but they let him alone without having conducted a
test for banned substances. The policemen have reportedly found drugs in the young
man’s car whose strange behavior was also reported by a citizen on the Romanian
emergency number 112. After the accident, the police units are conducting
searches on several Romanian roads in an attempt to discover all those driving
under the influence.

TALKS Romanian Interior Minister, Catalin Predoiu said on
Wednesday in Vienna at the end of his meeting with his Austrian counterpart,
Gerhard Karner, the ambition of the Ministry he is heading is to make Romania a
‘standard of border protection’. The Romanian official has announced the
signing of an administrative Dublin agreement simplifying the asylum
procedures. He underlined that the talks he had are a good beginning for a
‘construction road’ on all interest areas. Predoiu said that the migration is a
serious issue, which is seriously dealt with in Romania. The Austrian Interior
Minister said the cooperation model agreed upon with Romania in the field of
fighting the crossborder crime related to migrant smuggling is wanted to be
promoted at European level as well. According to him, crossborder cooperation
shows ‘special results’ in a joint operation conducted by the authorities in
Romania, Hungary and Austria. We recall that Austria is the only EU country
opposing Romania’s accession to Europe’s border-free area, Schengen, although
the country has fulfilled all the necessary conditions, a fact also admitted by
the other EU member countries and institutions. The Schengen system as a whole
does not function, Gerhard Karner said on Wednesday, adding that an expansion
isn’t proper at the moment.

(bill)