August 13, 2014
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România Internațional, 13.08.2014, 00:02
Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta has visited the Ocean Endeavour offshore drilling rig in the Black Sea, where the companies Exxon Mobil and OMV Petrom are doing exploration drilling for gas deposits. The operations are taking place about 200 km in deep sea at a depth of some 800 m. The Prime Minister hopes that the predictions concerning the reserves found so far might make Romania energy self-reliant. If the gas deposit in the Black Sea turns out to be big enough to be exploited, gas could be sold by the end of the decade.
Direct foreign investment in Romania went down by 10% in the first half of the year as compared to the same period of last year, the National Bank of Romania has announced today. According to the Central Bank, in the first six months of the year, investment amounted to about 1.2 billion Euros. Last year, direct foreign investment had gone up by about 27% as compared to 2012.
Izvoru Muresului in central Romania hosts the debates of the summer University of Romanians across the world. The discussions focus on minority rights in Romania, as well as on the Romanian minority rights in neighbouring countries and in the Balkans. Today, the debates target the Romanian communities in Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Albania and Macedonia. Another topic is the failure to observe the Romanian minority rights by certain EU states and the way in which the Romanian state supports those minorities. Over one hundred students, professors and representatives of the Romanian diaspora are attending the 12th edition of the Summer University of Romanians across the world until Friday. The theme of this year’s edition is “European Romania and Romanians at the EU and NATO border.”
Former Romanian minister of transport, Social-Democrat Dan Sova is being investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Directorate; he is suspected of being an accessory to abuse of office. Prosecutors claim that in 2007, the law firm where Sova was a partner signed illegal contracts with the Turceni and Rovinari energy complexes. At the moment, Sova is the strategist of Prime Minister Victor Ponta’s campaign for the presidential election scheduled in November. Last week, a highly influential businessman, Dan Voiculescu, founding president of the Conservative Party, an ally of the Social-Democratic Party in the ruling coalition, was sentenced to 10 years in jail being accused of money laundering by the National Anti-Corruption Directorate.
The humanitarian convoy consisting of over 260 trucks sent by Russia to Eastern Ukraine is to reach the common border today. Western countries support the demand of the Ukrainian authorities that the entire convoy be checked at the border, to do away with suspicions that Moscow might thus try to give aid to pro-Russian separatists. Moscow claims that it will meet the conditions imposed by Kiev regarding the itinerary of the convoy and the check up of the truck load. In turn, the International Red Cross expects security guarantees from Russia and Ukraine. Russian president Vladimir Putin has justified the aid sent through the need for doing away with what he called the catastrophic follow ups of the large scale offensive launched by the Ukrainian army in Donetsk and Lugansk, the last two strongholds of the separatists in Eastern Ukraine. In another development, also today, Putin is chairing a meeting of Russia’s Security Council in Sevastopol, Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in March.
The USA is considering its options of evacuating the civilians trapped on a mountain top in Northern Iraq by the Jihadists’ advance, US Secretary of State John Kerry said, quoted by FP. Over 35,000 people, mostly belonging to the Yazidi minority, a religious denomination persecuted by the Islamic State extremists, took refuge in the mountains in the autonomous region of Kurdistan, suffering from the shortage of water and food at temperatures of over 40-45 degrees C. Since Friday, US fighters have targeted militant positions of the Jihadists to check their advance to Iraqi Kurdistan. Since June 9th, the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad has been confronted with an offensive of the Islamic State Sunni militants, who took control of important areas in the North, East and West of Iraq.
In Cairo, representatives of Israel and the Hamas Palestinian Islamist movement continue negotiations today, the last day of the 72-hour ceasefire, to find a long term solution to the conflict in the Gaza Strip. The talks were resumed on Monday and both sides seem to defend their contradictory demands, FP reports. The Palestinian side demands the lifting of the Israeli blockade on Gaza imposed in June 2006, while Israel conditions the lifting of the blockade by the demilitarization of the region. In the last few weeks, clashes between Hamas and Israel have left nearly 2,000 Palestinians dead, mostly civilians and 64 Israeli soldiers dead, and have caused damage estimated at about 6 billion dollars.
