September 10, 2017 UPDATE
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Newsroom, 10.09.2017, 19:04
ACADEMIC YEAR RESUMES — Some 2.3 million high-school students and elementary pupils are on Monday starting a new school year. The 2017-2018 academic year comprises 35 school weeks and will end on May 25 and June 8, for 12th and 8th graders respectively. One of the main changes compared to the previous year is that teachers are forbidden of using extra-curricular material in class. Any new material has to be reviewed by the Education Ministry, once the methodology is agreed upon by a committee made up of ministry officials, trade union representatives, parents and students. Additionally, 5th graders will start the new school year without handbooks, which will be replaced by a controversial collection of materials, which they will use in class for the first two months of the first semester. There are still schools that haven’t received the health and fire safety permits.
DEFENCE — The name of Romania’s new Defense Minister will be made public on Tuesday, after the meeting of the Social-Democratic Party, party leader Liviu Dragnea said on Sunday. Dragnea said the Social-Democrats will consult with their junior ruling partners, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats. Liberal leader Ludovic Orban expressed reluctance over the nomination of a new Defense Minister, accusing the Government of trying to find a way out of allotting 2% of the country’s GDP to defense spending, as Romania committed to doing before its North-Atlantic partners. Outgoing Minister Adrian Tutuianu resigned last Tuesday after Prime Minister Mihai Tudose criticized the poor communication over the salaries in the military. Previously the Defense Ministry had announced that employees will this month receive only their regular pay, without their meal allowances and their social security contributions and income taxes being wired to the state budget. The Ministry’s announcement was denied both by the Prime Minister and the Finance Ministry, which argued there were no difficulties in covering the salary entitlements of Defense Ministry employees. Deputy Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu serves as interim Defense Minister.
IRMA — A crisis desk has been set up at the Romanian Foreign Ministry to oversee diplomatic interventions in the area hit by hurricane Irma, so as to assist all Romanian citizens affected. According to a press release made public on Sunday, the Ministry is taking action to cross-check official information released by the local authorities with info provided by Romanian citizens on site, to verify and confirm, using any means possible, their current state of health and whereabouts. Jointly with embassies in Paris, the Hague, London, Washington, Ciudad de Mexico, Havana, Lisbon, Warsaw and Ankara, the crisis desk is trying to identify the most efficient measures to assist Romanians affected by the hurricane. The Ministry recalls that all Romanian citizens can request consular aid at Romania’s diplomatic offices.
ACCIDENT — Five Romanians died and three were injured in a car accident near Vienna. They were travelling in a bus with Romanian license plates. According to a Foreign Ministry release, the injured were taken to a nearby hospital to receive emergency medical care, while a mobile team of Romania’s Embassy in Austria is providing consular aid.
COMMEMORATION — Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel was commemorated in Sighetul Marmatiei, northern Romania. The events also included a seminar devoted to Wiesel and a silent march. Deported in 1944 by Hungarian occupation troops to German concentration camps, Wiesel lived in France after the war, and subsequently settled in the United States. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1986 for promoting the memory of Holocaust victims. Wiesel visited Romania twice, and the National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Bucharest bears his name. Elie Wiesel passed away on July 2, 2016. (Translated by V. Palcu)
