September 5, 2022

A news update

Newsroom, 05.09.2022, 19:50

School – Almost 3 million pre-school and school children in Romania started a new school year on Monday in over 17,800 units across the country. The 2022-2023 school year will have 36 school weeks divided into five modules, separated by five mini holidays. End-of-semester tests will no longer be mandatory and there will be only one grade point average, an annual one, instead of semester grade point averages for each subject. Refurbishing works are unfinished in several schools while others lack fire safety certificates.

London — The presdient of the EC, Ursula von der Leyen, said she was looking forward to a constructive relationship with Liz Truss, the future British PM, in full respect of the agreemnets between the EU and the UK. The Romanian PM Nicoale Ciuca also congratulated the leader of the British Conservative Party Liz Truss for her success in the internal elections. Lizz Truss won against Rishi Sunak in the internal competition within the British Conservative Party after the resignation of the Prime Minister Boris Johnson. A foreign minister in the Johnson government, Liz Truss will be sworn in as prime minister on Tuesday, after being received by Queen Elizabeth II, occasion on which the acting prime minister will also come to present his resignation. Boris Johnson announced his resignation in July, after he had resisted for a long time challengers from his own party and the scandals overshadowed, for a while, by the war Russia started against Ukraine on February 24. Since then, he has stood out thanks to his firm support for Kyiv, especially the military aid offered. At domestic level, the British are waiting for consistent economic measures to help the population in winter, given that utility prices will be three times higher than last winter, and that inflation has exceeded 10%, Radio Romania’s correspondent to London reports.

Swimming – Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă congratulated Romanian athletes Bianca Costea, David Popovici and Vlad Stancu for their performances at the World Junior Swimming Championships from Lima, Peru. The Romanian PM wrote in a Facebook post that the three are “an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the more than three million children and young people who started the new school year”. “We are proud of our team that made known the Romanian anthem at the world competition for juniors in Lima”, Nicolae Ciucă also stated. On Sunday, on the last day of the competition, David Popovici won the gold in the 100m freestyle, Bianca Costea won gold in the 50m freestyle, and Vlad Stancu won the bronze medal in the 1,500 m freestyle event. Romania took 4th place in the medal ranking at the Junior World Championships, with 4 gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze medals. Gold was won by the mens 4×100 m freestyle relay team (David Popovici, Alexandru Constantinescu, Ştefan Cozma, Patrick Sebastian Dinu), David Popovici won gold in the 200m and 100m freestyle and Bianca Costea in the 50m freestyle. The Romanian swimmers ended a summer full of performances, with David Popovici being the star. He won the 100m and 200m events both at the Senior World Championships in Budapest and at the Senior European Championships in Rome.

Accord – The European Commission and Ukraine on Monday signed an agreement regarding a 500 million-Euro aid for housing and education for displaced people, as well as for agriculture in the war-ravaged country, AFP reports. This funding, announced by the EC on the sidelines of a meeting of the EU-Ukraine Association Council in Brussels, attended by the Ukrainian Prime Minister Denîs Shmîgal, is part of the European commitments announced this spring. “Electricity exports from Ukraine can replace considerable volumes of Russian gas imports,” said the head of the Ukrainian government. At the same time, he added that, “Ukraine has the largest underground gas storage facilities and could become the gas shelf’ of Europe.” Meanwhile, the price of gas in Europe rose by 30% on Monday, after Russia announced that gas delivery through the Nord Stream gas pipeline remained halted indefinitely, increasing fears of disruptions and the rationalization of gas this winter in the EU – Reuters reports.

Commemoration — On behalf of Germany, the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has apologized to the relatives of the Israeli victims of the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage-taking, assuming responsibility for the various “failures” that accompanied the tragedy, as part of Monday’s commemoration of the attack. On September 5, 1972, members of the Palestinian organization Black September entered an apartment of the Israeli delegation in the Olympic Village, killing two Israeli athletes and taking hostage nine other members of the delegation hoping to obtain an exchange for Palestinian prisoners. The intervention of the German security services ended with the death of all the hostages, a bloody denouement for which the West German authorities were partially responsible. Five Palestinian attackers were shot dead and three others were arrested. The Scholz government agreed to unlock the sum of 28 million Euros for compensations. Documents will also be declassified to allow German and Israeli historians to have a better understanding of what happened. The Israeli President Isaac Herzog, present at the commemoration of the attack, expressed hope that the agreement would bring this painful episode to a point of healing.

Moldova – The President of the neighboring Republic of Moldova (ex-Soviet with a majority Romanian-speaking population), Maia Sandu, convened a meeting of the Supreme Security Council on Monday in which two main topics were analyzed: the procrastination of high corruption cases and the numerous false bomb alerts of the recent period. After the meeting, Maia Sandu spoke, in a press release, about the measures that must be taken to increase peoples trust in the judiciary, but also about the need to stop the phenomenon of leaking information from pending criminal cases, which, she says, harms investigations. Referring to the multiple false bomb alerts, Maia Sandu said that these were the actions of elements that aim to increase the degree of anxiety in society. (LS)