September 24, 2016 UPDATE

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Newsroom, 24.09.2016, 12:31

FESTIVAL Bucharest is seeing the third edition of RADIRO, Europe’s only large-scale festival exclussively devoted to radio orchestras. The event, which has been staged by Radio Romania kicked off on Friday night with George Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody performed by the Shenzhen symphony orchestra of China. That was the first participation of an orchestra from Asia in the festival. Until its last day, October 1st, the festival will have seen concerts by the Norwegian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the MDR Radio Orchestra of Leipzig, the ORF Radio Orchestra of Vienna the BBC Concert Orchestra and the National Orchestra of Radio Romania.

MIGRATION The International Migration Organisation (IOM) announced that more and more migrants choose to return to their countries of origin instead of settling in the countries that offered them shelter. The organisation announced it had contributed to the repatriation of 51,000 people who chose to leave Europe in the first 6 months of this year. In 2015 the organisation helped nearly 69 thousand people to get back home. The first three countries the migrants chose to return to were Albania, Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of these migrants were leaving Germany, a country, which in 2015 reported the largest number of asylum seekers, 442,000.

RESIGNATION Romanian senator Gabriel Oprea, former deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister, who is currently facing charges of manslaughter said that he would resign from Parliament the next week. On Monday his Senate colleagues turned down a prosecution request from the National Anti-corruption Directorate for Oprea, a move that triggered protest rallies in Romania’s major cities. We recall the former Interior Minister has been placed under investigation after a police officer from his motorcade was killed in a road accident.

ENVIRONMENT Famous US actor Leonardo DiCaprio has posted an Instagram message in support of actions aimed at protecting environment in Romania. The actor said the governemnt in Bucharest should protect forests from illegal logging and destruction. DiCaprio has congratulated Greenpeace volunteers who cleaned the waste from forests in central Romania. In 1998, the actor founded a foundation that develops projects for the protection of the environment. In another development on Saturday thousands of volunteers took to the streets to collect waste part of a cleaning operation staged by ”Let’s Do It, Romania!”, which has in the past 7 years become a symbol of volunteering and managed to involve over one million Romanians who have collected close to 25 thousand tons of waste from 300 regions in Romania. For the first time this year the National Cleaning Day has enjoyed support from the government in Bucharest as five ministeries have got involved in the opeartion.

EARTHQUAKE An earthquake of 5.3 Richter rocked Romania at 2 a.m. on Saturday. With an epicenter in Vrancea, eastern Romania, the termor was felt in Bucharest, the Republic of Moldova, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Serbia. According to the Inspectorate for Emergency situations no victims or material damage have been reported. Since the beginning of the year Romania has witnessed four earthquakes with magnitudes above 4 Richter, all with epicenters in Vrancea.