October 6, 2014

Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news

Bogdan Matei, 06.10.2014, 12:00

GERB, Bulgaria’s right-of-centre party this past Sunday won the country’s snap elections, with 32 per cent of the votes. The Socialist Party that supported the outgoing government of technocrat Plamen Oresharsky got only 15 per cent of the votes, while his association in the Government, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, representing the Turkish minority, got 15 per cent of the votes, and is highly likely to outclass the Socialist Party, after the votes will have been counted, cast by Bulgarian citizens living in neighbouring Turkey. Partial results have revealed that other four political groups, right-of-centre, nationalist or populist have cleared the 4 per cent electoral threshold, thus gaining access to Parliament. The leader of GERB, former Prime Minister Boiko Borisov has stated he was prepared to form the government, provided he got the backing of a parliamentary majority.

Four people have died and more than 30 others were wounded on Sunday, in a serious car accident near the Greek city of Thessalonica, on the motorway linking Thessalonica to Veria. A truck driven by a Romanian citizen hit 35 stationed vehicles, three other trucks included, in an area with traffic restrictions, where road repair works were in progress. This is the most serious accident in Greece, the head of Greece’s Highway Police has declared. The Romanian driver is being kept in custody by the police. He will have to face charges of manslaughter. Officials in Bucharest have extended their condolence messaged to the mourning families.

The Nobel Committee in Stockholm on Monday has announced that the Nobel Prize in Medicine this year equally goes to researchers John O’Keefe (US-Great Britain), May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser of Norway The three have been rewarded for research in the field of neurology, namely for their discoveries of the cells making a positioning system in the brain. Last year the recipients of the Nobel Prize for Medicine were American researchers James E. Rothman and Randy W. Schekman and Thomas Sudhof from Germany, for their discoveries in the filed of the system regulating the intracellular traffic. The awarding of the Nobel Prize in Medicine marks the debut of the Nobel season, scheduled to carry on this coming Tuesday with the Prize in Physics. Chemistry, Peace, Literature and Economy Prizes are to be announced later this week. Awardees will each receive a gold medal and prize money worth around 1 point 1 million dollras. Prizes wil be officially granted on December the 10th.

Romania’s Foreign Affairs Minister Titus Corlatean and his Czech counterpart Lubomir Zaoralek, in Bucharest today will be holding talks on the recent developments in the European Union’s eastern neighborhood, with special emphasis on the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. Also high on the bilateral talks’ agenda are the European Union’s enlargement policy, as well as strengthening European-level cooperation in the case of joint interest files. According to a press release of the Romanian Foreign Affairs Ministry, also high on the agenda are the international situation, mainly the recent evolutions in the Middle East. Lubomir Zaoralek is on an official visit to Romania, as 2014 is the year when the 20th anniversary is celebrated of the signing by Romania and the Czech Republic of the friendship and cooperation Treaty.

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State.Victoria Nuland as of today is on a mini-European tour, whose first leg is Ukraine. For three days running, in Kiev, Nuland will be holding talks with Ukrainian government’s high-ranking officials, focusing of supporting Ukraine’s reform process, the stage of the Donbas conflict and the United States’ support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Victoria Nuland’s visit in Kiev has occurred against the backdrop of recent information on the breaking of the truce by the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, according to the Unian Ukrainian press agency. Since the beginning of the crisis, the USA has earmarked nearly 300 million dollars for the Ukrainian government, 100 million of which were for military support, that excluding, however, lethal weapons. The US Assistant Secretary of State’s European tour, mainly focusing on security issues, also includes Germany and Finland.

More than one thousand military, representatives of Romania, the US and Great Britain’s armed forces as of today will be taking part in a joint large-scale multinational military exercise staged in the southeastern Romanian county of Galati. The exercise, to be held until October 18, will be implementing the scenario of waging defensive battle by a group of forces made of small mechanized infantry units, tanks and artillery, with the support of air forces. The eventual aim of the exercise is to enhance and maintain the military’s training level, as well as to provide a higher amount of interoperability between participating structures. In its capacity of NATO member state, Romania has been periodically taking part, with all its arms categories, in joint exercises scheduled by NATO headquarters.

The Romanian Simona Halep has skipped one position down, and is currently seeded 3rd in the women tennis players’ world rankings made public on Monday. We recall Halep has been the world’s number two tennis player for seven weeks in a row. Outclassing Halep was the Russian Maria Sharapova, the winner of the WTA tournament in Beijing, where Halep quit in the quarterfinals. The American Serena Williams is still top of the table, while 4th-seeded is Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic, who is only 120 points down from Sinona Halep. Only two other Romanians, Monica Niculescu and Irina Begu are among the world’s top 100 tennis players, being seeded 45th and 61st, respectively.