March 6, 2021

A roundup of domestic and international news.

Newsroom, 06.03.2021, 13:55

POPE – Pope Francis has today had a historic meeting with Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in the country’s holy city of Najaf, in the south. This is the second day of the Pope’s visit to Iraq, the first ever papal visit to this country. Also today Pope Francis visited the archaeological site in Ur the 4000-year old city believed to be the birthplace of Abraham, patriarch of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. “From this place, where faith was born, from the land of our father Abraham, let us affirm that God is merciful and that the greatest blasphemy is to profane his name by hating our brothers and sisters,” Pope Francis said in Ur. The Pope will hold Mass at Baghdad’s Chaldean Cathedral of Saint Joseph later today. On Sunday he will travel to Mosul, a former Islamic State stronghold, where Christian churches and other buildings still bear the scars of conflict. The Pope’s visits abroad, to mostly Muslim countries such as Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinian territories, have been aimed to boost inter-religious dialogue. Iraq’s Christian community, one of the oldest in the world, has been particularly devastated, falling to about 300,000 from about 1.5 million before 2003 and the brutal Islamist militant violence that followed.

CORONAVIRUS — Over 1.1 million Romanians have been vaccinated against Covid-19 so far, most of them with Pfizer-BioNTech, but also with Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines. More than 4,000 new infections with Covid-19 were recorded in the past 24 hours in Romania. Some 1,000 Covid patients are in intensive care. Several counties are now in the red zone with over 3 cases per one thousand inhabitants over the course of 14 days, namely Timiş (west), Maramureş (north-east, Ilfov (south), Cluj (north-west) and Braşov (centre). The infection rate in Bucharest passed 3 on Friday, with the capital city now re-entering the Covid red zone. The South-African variant of the coronavirus has also now been identified in Romania in two Covid patients, one of whom from Bucharest. The British variant had been indentified in Romania at the beginning of January. Over 842,000 infections have been confirmed in Romania since the onset of the pandemic, with the death toll exceeding 20,850.

CRIME GROUP – The Prosecutor’s Office in Montpellier, southern France, has announced that a ‘highly sophisticated’ international crime group involved in human trafficking has been dismantled in four European countries and that around 30 victims from South America and Romania have been rescued. Simultaneous arrests took place in Spain, Italy, Romania and France and an investigation has been opened for aggravated procuring and human trafficking. The crime group was made up of Romanian and Columbian nationals, who lured the victims, mostly from Columbia, the Dominican Republic, Paraguay and Romania, with the promise of a better life in France. The investigation started in 2020 in Montpellier, where two young Columbian women, who managed to escape, asked for the help of the French police.

HANDBALL – CSM Râmnicu Vâlcea, Romanian womens handball team is today playing at home against CSM Bucharest. The fixture counts towards the Champions Leagues round of 16s first leg. The return leg is scheduled in Bucharest on March 13. In the National League, CSM Bucharest fare better than the other teams in the echelon, being 8 points clear from the runner-up team, Minaur Baia Mare, and 9 points clear from SCM Ramnicu Valcea. We remind you that this week, Cristina Neagu of Romania (CSM Bucharest) and Kristina Lisevic of Serbia (CSM Ramnicu Valcea) have been designated best player and best foreign player, respectively, of the 2019-2020 National League. In 2010, 2015, 2016 and 2018, the International Handball Federation designated Cristina Neagu the worlds best handballed. Neagu thus became the worlds first ever handballed in history to have won the trophy four times.

FILM – Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, the most recent film by Romanian director Radu Jude, has won the Golden Bear trophy at the 71st edition of the Berlin International Film Festival – Berlinale, this year held in an online format between 1st and 5th March. The film looks into the relations between the individual and society when the leaked sex video of a school teacher goes viral on the Internet, turning her life upside down. “It is an elaborated film as well as a wild one, clever and childish, geometrical and vibrant, imprecise in the best way. It attacks the spectator, evokes disagreement, but leaves no one with a safety distance,” the jury said about Judes film. The win comes six years after the director won the Silver Bear for his film Aferim!. Also at this year’s edition of the Berlin International Film Festival, the Romanian-Turkish coproduction, Brother’s Keeper, directed by Ferit Karahan, won the Fipresci prize of the international film critics. (EE)