March 2, 2020

A roundup of domestic and international news

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Newsroom, 02.03.2020, 14:00

COVID-19 – The Group
for Strategic Communication on Monday announced some 52 people are being
quarantined in institutional centers while over 8,000 are under house
monitoring. So far 3 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, of whom one
person has recovered, and the other two are in good health. On the other hand,
the global death toll of the coronavirus has exceeded 3,000 with 80,000 being
infected worldwide, mostly in China, where the number of victims is constantly decreasing.
South Korea and Italy are of particular concern right now, reporting dozens of
deaths. In Italy 500 new infections were reported in a single day. Several
major events at European level have been canceled.

GOVERNMENT – The Liberals are today
starting negotiations with parliamentary parties with a view to forming a new
majority that would support the investiture of Florin Citu’s Cabinet. The
Social-Democrats in opposition have criticized Florin Citu and accused the
Liberals of continuing to support the idea of early elections. The Save Romania
Union will make a decision depending on how negotiations unfold and on the
strict observance of their own priorities, namely the election of mayors in two
rounds. The Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians has warned that any
negotiation made after the presentation of the list of Ministers and the
governing program is bound to fail. The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats
claims the Liberals have presented the list of Ministers to ensure the new
Cabinet is rejected by Parliament, while the People’s Movement Party says a
Liberal Government supported by a minority in Parliament is unlikely to be
invested. Florin Cîţu’s nomination by president Klaus Iohannis came after the
Constitutional Court ruled as unconstitutional the president’s first choice,
the interim prime minister and leader of the National Liberal Party Ludovic
Orban. The latter’s government had been dismissed through a vote of
no-confidence at the beginning of February.

INVESTIGATION -
The head of the Maramures County Council and the president of the
Social-Democratic branch in Maramures, Gabriel Zetea, announced he would be
appointing today an interim manager of the Emergency County Hospital after its
manager and former Health Minister Sorina Pintea was arrested. Zetea wants to
exclude Pintea from the Social-Democratic Party along with anyone who might be
involved in the investigation, pending the end of the trial. Pintea was placed
under pre-trial arrest for 30 days for aggravated bribe taking. According to
anticorruption prosecutors, Pintea received 10,000 euros and the equivalent in
lei of around 25,000 euros between December 2019 and February 2020 from a
company, via an intermediary, accounting for 7% of the value of a contract
signed with that company to carry out rehabilitation works at a medical unit.

POLLUTION – The
latest spike in pollution levels reported in Bucharest was caused by a number
of factors, such as uncontrolled vegetation fires and a fire, but the air
quality is currently showing signs of returning to normal parameters, Romania’s
Environment Minister told a press conference on Monday. National and private
networks for monitoring air quality on Sunday night and Monday morning reported
record-high pollution levels, exceeding the legal threshold by over 1,000%.
Romania was supposed to submit by April 1, 2019 all national programs aimed at
controlling pollution to the European Commission. For its failure to do so, the
European Commission has launched infringement procedures against Romania.

EUROVISION – Roxen will be representing
Romania in the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Alcohol You. The
song won Sunday’s national selection contest. The jury picked the song out of a
total of five songs that were selected for the final, each having prepared a
special show. The 2020 Eurovision Song Contest will be hosted by Rotterdam, the
Netherlands, under the slogan Open Up. The semi-finals will take place on May
12 and 14, and the final on May 16. A total of 26 countries will take part in
the contest. Last year’s winner was Duncan Laurence, the representative of the
Netherlands, with his song Arcade. Romania’s best performance in the
Eurovision Song Contest was third place, which it obtained twice, in 2005 in
Kiev, with Let Me Try, performed by Luminita Anghel and Sistem, and in 2010
in Oslo with Playing with Fire, performed by Paula Seling and Ovi.

(Translated
by V. Palcu)