Morning headlines – January 22th 2021

Coronavirus and vaccines

• The EU’s borders will stay open. The leaders of the European Union and the bloc’s institutions have established to keep the borders open for essential trips, said the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, stating that, as for the vaccination certificates, the documents will only serve as medical papers.
• Call for limiting the number of trips. The European Union has called on its citizens to avoid the less import trips between the countries inside the Union in order to cope with the new variants of the coronavirus, saying that the sanitarian situation is “very serious”, at the end of a summit held through a video-conference among the 27 states, held on Thursday, says Agerpress.
• Fewer vaccine doses. Pfizer has reduced to half the COVID-19 vaccine deliveries in some EU states this week. Romania only got 50% of the planned volume for this week, the other half to be delivered gradually, until the end of March, and the deliveries are to come back to normal, starting next week, said the state secretary from the Health Minister, Andrei Baciu.

Global political and military events

• The New START Treaty will be extended. The US has announced on Thursday that it will propose the 5-years extension of the Treaty on the reduction of strategic arms weapons New START, signed between the US and Russia, which will expire in February.
• Arrests in Russia. The Russian authorities have detained, Thursday, five collaborators of the opponent Aleksey Navalny, attempting to stop a protest planned for the weekend.
• The UE wants to sanction Russia. The European Parliament is asking the imposition of sanctions against Russia, following the detainment of Aleksey Navalny, says AFP.
• Israel attacked Syria with missiles. Several Israeli aircrafts have attacked, last night, many targets in the Hama region in Syria, said SANA Agency.
• Iran is threatening Donald Trump. The Twitter account of the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has posted a photo with Donald Trump playing golf and while targeted by a drone, said AP.

Romania’s defence and security

• Infrastructure after 2030. The highway on Prahova Valley might be done by 2030, in an optimistic perspective, and no subway for Otopeni or high-speed trains until 2030, said the Minister of Transports, Catalin Drula, according to hotnews.ro.
• Fewer salaried employees in the Capital. The number of Capital’s salaried employees was, at the end of October 2020, 1.034.265 people, with 4.375 less (0,42%) than in the same period of 2019, said the National Institute of Statistics.