October 8, 2015

News and Current Affairs

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Newsroom, 08.10.2015, 11:59

The Romanian president today said that Romania has made great strides in taking responsibility for the Holocaust, on the occasion of commemorating the Holocaust. According to figures, between a quarter million and 300,000 Jews died in 1941 in Bessarabia, northern Bukovina and Transdnestr. The Holocaust was officially admitted to by the Romanian authorities in 2004, based on the conclusions drawn by a special committee on WWII deportations.

NATO defense ministers convene in Brussels today to discuss the strengthening of the Russian military campaign in Syria. Tensions mounted after Turkey claimed that Russian jets violated its airspace. The NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg described Russia’s military activity in Syria as “a troubling escalation” and said NATO was ready to send troops to Turkey to defend it from any threats at its southern border. The talks in Brussels will also tackle the implementation of the decisions taken at the NATO Summit in Wales, particularly the action plan for enhancing the Alliance’s operational capacity. Romania is represented by Defense Minister Mircea Duşa. On the sidelines of the meeting, he will have bilateral talks with his Georgian and Greek counterparts, to improve Romania’s defense cooperation with these countries.

The Swedish Academy announces today the Nobel Prize for Literature, the most prestigious literary award in the world. The favorites are Belarus writer Svetlana Alexievich, Norwegian Jon Fosse, American writers Joyce Carol Oats and Philip Roth, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, and Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o. In 2009, the prize went to German writer Herta Muller, who grew up and lived in Romania during the communist dictatorship. On Tuesday, the academy granted the prize for medicine, and on Wednesday the prize for chemistry. On Friday, the Academy grants the prize for peace, and on Monday that for economy.

The estimated damages caused by the Volkswagen recall amount to over 30 million Euros, accounting for 105,000 cars, according to government sources in Bucharest. The figure is based on expenses by car owners for Euro 5 emission standard monitoring tests, when the cars actually matched Euro 4 standards. The Romanian state will sue the German carmaker for the difference, after the company releases official information. Volkswagen recently admitted to major fraud related to its car firmware.

EU ministers of the interior are meeting today in Brussels to talk about the refugee crisis, with a view to reaching an agreement on repatriating refugees whose asylum applications are turned down. At the same time, European ministers also discuss conditions to arrest refugees who try to avoid expulsion. Interior and foreign ministers from EU countries will be joined by Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, to discuss the wave of migration.

Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu held a meeting with the outgoing Japanese ambassador on Thursday. His Excellency Keiji Yamamoto saluted the strengthening relationship between the two countries in areas such as economy and culture. The Romanian official thanked the ambassador for the progress registered in the process of removing the obligation of Romanian citizens to obtain a visa to travel to Japan.