April 17, 2017 UPDATE
Click here for an update on domestic and international news
Newsroom, 17.04.2017, 19:14
2nd Day of Easter — Christians from all over the world, including from Romania, a majority Orthodox country, have entered Easter Week, when celebrations devoted to Christ’s Resurrection continue. The celebration of Christ’s Resurrection, the most important of Christianity, has been devoted three days. On Monday, the second day of Easter, priests officiated the same service as on the Resurrection night. Their vestments are white and during this week everything is under the sign of Light, a symbol of Christ’s Resurrection. During Easter Week, Christians greet each other saying Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!
Madrid visit — The Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on Monday started a private visit to Spain, which will last until Saturday, the presidential administration has announced. On Easter night the president was in Sibiu (in central Romania) together with his wife to attend the religious service at the “Holy Trinity” Roman-Catholic Church. In the message President Klaus Iohannis conveyed on Easter he made warm wishes to all Romanians in the country and abroad and said the spirit of this holy celebration should give us confidence to look at the future with optimism.
Referendum — Turkey’s referendum on expanding the prerogatives of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was unbalanced, stated on Monday a common mission of observers of the OSCE and of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE). The referendum was an “unlevel playing field” and the two sides of the campaign “did not have equal opportunities”, said Cezar Florin Preda, the head of the PACE delegation. The Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, won by a narrow margin the referendum, which grants him sweeping new powers. While the main opposition party questions the legitimacy of the referendum, saying that the vote was marked by illegalities, the Turkish president told his supporters that he would promulgate the constitutional amendments that could allow him to stay in power for another 12 years. His plans after the victory focus on concentrating power in the hands of the president, who will be able to keep his political affiliation, on scrapping the position of prime minister, on electing the high-ranking magistrates and dissolving Parliament. European leaders are reticent at the results of the referendum held in Turkey. According to news agencies, the EU and the Council of Europe highlighted that the result of the referendum was tight, a fact which, alongside the implications of the constitutional changes that will be made, should be a reason for Ankara to look for international consensus as regards their implementation.
Alert and warning drill — An alert and warning drill will take place all across Romania as of Tuesday until Friday. During this period of time sirens will be tested alternatively between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. People will hear the alert signal made up of five different sounds, each lasting 16 seconds. The secretary of state with the Interior Ministry, Raed Arafat, has pointed out that this is the largest testing drill organized in the past years and that it is aimed at checking if the alert sirens are heard by the population in the areas covered by the alert and warning system. In Bucharest there are 400 sirens while in the rest of the territory there are 7,000 such alert systems. The systems are placed mainly in those areas with high technological or radioactive risk.
Beijing — China has announced that its economy has grown in the first quarter of 2017 by 6.9%, which points to a higher growth rate than in the previous forecasts. The data show that the world’s second largest economy is getting stabilized, after the Chinese authorities had recently announced the slowest pace of growth of the past 26 years. (translation by L. Simion)
