Several roads closed down, traffic disrupted, car crashes. Temperatures set to rise by weekend.
Although it is almost mid-March, southern Romania experiences blizzards and snowfalls. Traffic was again disrupted both on national and county roads and in the cities. In Bucharest traffic was tough, severely testing drivers’ patience, with snow clearing vehicles being once again “a sight for sore eyes.”
The meteorologists have announced that snowfalls will end and normal temperatures for this time of year will return this weekend. ‘The spring weather will arrive starting this Sunday. On Sunday we will have maximum temperatures of 5-10 degrees, with 10-12 degrees in Bucharest,’ Aurora Bell, director of forecast within the National Meteorological Administration (ANM), stated for Realitatea FM. The winter season will continue only at the mountainside, but the tourists are warned that the avalanche risk alert is still on. The mountain rescuers have issued a new alert yesterday, advising the tourists to stay off the Bucegi Mountains because there is...
The National Executive Council of PSD yesterday agreed to set up an Honorary Council of party founders.
PSD President Victor Ponta is uncomfortable with presenting the National Council (CN) as “the last battle” for jobs in PSD. According to Mediafax, he said yesterday, at the beginning of the Executive Committee meeting, that “unfortunately for the party,” the next meeting of the National Council is described as “the last battle, the last frontier” - with reference to the elections for the CN president.
Acting CN president Adrian Nastase ran for a new term at the Council and was given as certain winner. His only rival...
Viewpoint
The National Anti-corruption Directorate’s intention to detain a Social Democratic Party (PSD) senator has sparked comprehensive and tangled debate. It is not Catalin Voicu who is the ruling power’s main target, but a pawn for anti-corruption prosecutors who are after two different targets. Marian Vanghelie is the `lesser one. Top target is Viorel Hrebenciuc, or the VH, as he is known in high-up jargon. PSD leadership does not really scramble to prevent such operation. Ponta&Co have rather breathed a sigh of relief they can get rid of an inconvenient...
In an interview with ‘Evenimentul Zilei,’ Cozmin Gusa talks about presidential elections, and the position and destiny of parties performing on the Romanian political stage. Gusa - who acted as consultant for PSD during last year’s elections - ranks Mircea Geoana’s visit to media tycoon Sorin Ovidiu Vantu only third in the top of factors that led Traian Basescu to victory. First goes PSD and the association of its image with that of Ion Iliescu. “It was the strangest event in the campaign and superimposed to Basescu’s second...
SANTIAGO - Yet another powerful earthquake struck Chile yesterday morning - this time a 7.2 magnitude quake in the central part of the country, including Santiago, according to New York Daily News. The quake shook the country as President-elect Sebastian Pinera and hundreds of high powered Chileans gathered for his swearing in ceremony in the capital city.
Images of the ceremony showed a somewhat concerned but mostly unfazed crowd. The ceremony continued as planned. No news on the extent of the damage was immediately available.
Chile’s...
Public and private sector workers went on strike on Thursday, grounding flights, shutting schools and halting public transport.
ATHENS - Athens’ streets echoed with loud-speakers blaring slogans calling for the rich to pay for a severe debt crisis, as thousands marched against cuts in civil servants’ income, tax hikes, a pension freeze and increase in the retirement age. “No sacrifice for the rich!” protesters chanted, beating drums and holding banners reading: “Where did the money go?” Under pressure from European Union partners and markets to do more to stem a crisis that has shaken the euro, the government last week unveiled a 4.8 billion euro ($6.51...
KIEV - Ukraine’s new prime minister Mykola Azarov, declaring state coffers were empty, promised on Thursday to meet all obligations to the International Monetary Fund and push through a realistic 2010 budget. President Viktor Yanukovich has moved swiftly to consolidate power since his election last month to end years of dysfunctional government and economic backsliding under the leaders of the 2004 Orange Revolution. “The country has been plundered, the coffers are empty, state debt has risen threefold,” Azarov, a former finance minister and a...
Government will allow companies to pay first the principle of the arrears owed to state, and not just the corresponding penalties and will reduce the number of monthly tax statements companies need to be filled out in order to pay their contributions into the state budget, Mediafax reported Premier Emil Boc as saying. ‘We now give you the possibility to pay not only the penalties, but the debt-principal, too, as it is the latter that is continuously generating the former,’ the PM told company representatives attending the signing ceremony of project...
Adriean Videanu, Minister of Economy, Commerce and Business Environment, says that the industrial production is growing slightly, with the electric energy and natural gas sectors helping the economic recovery this year.
“In October 2009 the electric energy and natural gas sectors put a stop to the economic downturn and this year they will help the economic recovery. The industrial production is on a slight upward trend. The overall premises for exiting the recession are being created,” Videanu told a press conference, Mediafax reports. When...
According to the estimates drafted in a report by Business Monitor International (BMI), the Romanian insurance market will grow by more than 200 per cent over the next five years, with the level of gross subscribed bonuses set to reach RON 18.471 bln in 2014, Mediafax informs. The report was drafted in January, the BMI analysts estimating on the basis of the data they had that the gross bonuses subscribed on the Romanian insurance market last year totaled RON 8.309 bln. Of the total estimated for 2014, the bonuses subscribed on the general insurance market will...
photo by: AP
For the last few weeks, regional elections of March 28 and 29 have been the central point of Italy’s politics. The ruling party led by Premier Silvio Berlusconi seems more interested than ever, since it came to power, by a local confrontation that might bring it in control of 13 important regions, such as Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Veneto, Campania, Marche, Umbria, Lazio, Basilicata, Calabria and Puglia.
Maybe this explains the row sparked by the failure to register in due time the electoral lists of PDL in Lazio and Lombardy. As it is known, in Lombardy, the list topped by Roberto Formigoni has been invalidated because it lacked all the required valid signatures. In Lazio, on the other hand, the list led by Renata Polverini reached the Electoral Bureau 45 minutes after the deadline. After various statements, including one by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, the government passed late last week a decree aimed at providing magistrates...
MADRID - Big-spending Real Madrid failed to qualify for the Champions League quarter-finals for the sixth straight season when Olympique Lyon dumped the Spaniards out 2-1 on aggregate on Wednesday.
Real’s dream of winning a 10th European title at their Bernabeu stadium in May was shattered by Miralem Pjanic’s 75th-minute strike, which secured a 1-1 draw for visiting Lyon in...
MANCHESTER - Wayne Rooney (photo) scored twice again as Manchester United cruised into the quarter-finals of the Champions League after a 4-0 win over a feeble AC Milan sent them through 7-2 on aggregate on Wednesday. Rooney, who scored twice in the 3-2 San Siro win, was on target with a 13th-minute header that broke the hearts of the seven-times winners.
He added his second at the...
Two League I club
owners suspended
On Wednesday, Universitatea Craiova financier Adrian Mititelu and FC Timisoara financier Marian Iancu received a six-month suspension and RON 150,000 fines for making offensive statements about the President and leadership of the Romanian Football Federation, Agerpres informs. The decision was taken by the Disciplinary Commission of the...
For the first time in Romania world’s biggest heavy metal bands will perform on the same stage. Iconic Metallica, Heaven&Hell, Rammstein, Alice in Chains and Slayer are on the menu.
Romexpo will host next July some of the biggest bands of the world metal scene, in an unprecedented event for Romania. For the first time, Sonispehere Festival gets to Bucharest and brings the Big Four of heavy metal in one tour: Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax. “Who would have thought that, 25 years since their creation, the masters of metal will be more popular than ever and will...
In cinema menu this weekend you can find a mixed bunch of highly commercial and highly intelligent. Anyone can take a pick, from vampires to angels, from ghosts to silly lovers.
The Lovely Bones
(USA 2009)
Directed by: Peter Jackson
With: Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Rachel Weisz, Mark Whalberg, Susan Sarandon
Showing at: Movieplex Cinema Plaza, Hollywood Multiplex
After the monumental success of “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, director Peter Jackson has only worked on “King Kong,” a remake that...
Two highly valued works in modern art history are on sale this Saturday in the weekly art auction held at the Operetta.
'Professor Minovici' by Eustatiu Stoenescu and 'Inner Yard in Seville' by Samuel Mutzner have a starting bid price of RON 55,000. The auction also lists several works from important Romanian artists: Corneliu Baba with a study, having as starting price RON 39,000,...
The Oradea Court of Appeals will ask the Romanian Intelligence Agency (SRI) and the Organized Crime and Terrorism Investigation Department (DIICOT) to declassify evidence on Syrian Omar Hayssam’s escape from Romania. The court held a new hearing in the case yesterday, daily ‘Romania libera’ reported. Since Hayssam’s whereabouts are not exactly known, the court heard the...
The new education law, which is not yet known when will come in force, brings yet again, major changes to the education system and examination procedures, according to several national newspapers, which see education reform as a never-ending process given the new modifications accompanying each new minister’s tenure. The new law introduces a new type of high school graduation examination...
Former football player Cornel Dinu has accused ex PM Petre Roman of asking for Soviet support in the course of the December 1989 events. ‘It was not Ion Iliescu who sought the Soviet help. Petre Roman is the one who, in a perfect Russian – I can understand the language – discussed with the Soviet consul asking for help from the Soviet troops. Petre Roman was really scared of...
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