July 17, 2021 UPDATE

Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 17.07.2021, 19:30

WARNING Meteorologists have issued yellow warnings for extremely hot weather
in 25 counties in southern and western Romania where the discomfort index will
remain high. Showers are expected in the mountains while in the rest of the
territory highs will be ranging between 29 and 37 degrees. Floods have caused damage
in Alba County, central-western Romania, where hundreds have been evacuated.
Roads have been blocked and cars swept away while a series of events scheduled
for this weekend have been cancelled.

HOMAGE Seven years on from the MH-17 aviation disaster, the Romanian Foreign
Ministry paid homage to the 298 people on board, including a Romanian citizen,
who lost their lives in the incident. Romania believes the culprits must be
brought to court and hails the criminal procedures underway in the Netherlands,
under the Dutch legislation. We recall the MH-17 aircraft belonging to Malaysia
Airlines, was shot down over eastern Ukraine while flying from Amsterdam to
Kuala Lumpur. Dutch prosecutors launched criminal proceedings against four
suspects in June 2020 and started to investigate evidence a year later.

EXTREME WEATHER The death toll from devastating floods across parts of Western Germany rose
to 130 on Saturday, while more than one thousand people are still unaccounted
for. Germany and Belgium have for several days been affected by unprecedented
torrential rains, which damaged several towns and villages. The most affected
region is Rhineland-Palatinate where the police believe the death toll could
get higher. About 700 residents were evacuated on Friday after a dam burst near
Cologne. Water levels remain high in many localities sweeping away cars and
making houses to collapse in the worst natural disaster to have struck Germany
in the past 50 years. Entire communities have been stranded and left without
electricity and communications. A death toll over 20 has prompted the Belgian government
to declare a day of national mourning. Torrential rains have also affected the
Netherlands and Luxembourg.

TENNIS Romanian-German pair Horia Tecau/Kevin Krawietz on Saturday qualified
for the finals of the doubles contest in the tennis tournament in Hamburg with
over one million Euros in prize money after a straight 6-3, 6-4 win against US
challenger Jamie Cerretani and Hans Hach Verdugo of Mexico. Top seeds Tecau and
Krawietz are to take on Tim Puetz of Germany and Michael Venus of New Zealand.
This would be Krawietz and Tecau’s fourth finals together and their second on a
clay court. They obtained their first title in Halle last month after finals
played in Rotterdam and Barcelona.

FILM
La Civil, a Romanian-Belgian-Mexican production directed by Romanian Teodora
Ana Mihai on Friday was awarded Prix de L’Audace of the Un certain regard section
of the 74th edition of the Film festival in Cannes. Among its
producers are the famous Romanian director Cristian Mungiu and the Belgian
brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. The film tells the story of Cielo, a
Mexican mother searching for her daughter who has been abducted by members of a
drug cartel. As the local authorities fail to help her, Cielo takes things into
her own hands and gradually turns from housewife into an avenging activist.
Russian filmmaker Kira Kovalenko has got the top prize in ‘Un certain regard’
for her movie ‘Unclenching the Fists’.

COVID-19 Romania has a ‘window of opportunity’ of at least 6 weeks to get ready
for the moment in which the highly-contagious Delta variant is going to rise
significantly and create problems, says Andrei Baciu, secretary of state with
the Health Ministry in Bucharest. Authorities in Romania are presently targeting
the country’s rural areas to step up the vaccine rollout. According to Baciu,
no significant vaccination initiatives have been carried out in 25-30 % of
Romania’s communes and villages. The number of infections with the novel
coronavirus remains low in Romania amid fears of the highly-contagious Delta
variant, which the authorities believe will become dominant this autumn. In
spite of the sustained pro-vaccination campaigns, the threshold of 5 million
fully-vaccinated Romanians has not been reached yet, a month and a half after
the term initially set by the authorities. 49 new infections were reported on
Saturday as well as two Covid-related fatalities.

(bill)