Morning headlines – January 8th 2021

Coronavirus and vaccines

• Spain is the fourth Western Europe country which has more than 2 million cases of COVI-19 confirmed infections, according to data published by the Ministry of Health.
• Great Britain will only let foreigners enter the country if they have a negative COVID-19 test, says BBC.
• Israel will vaccinate all citizens with ages above 16 years old, until March. Benjamin Netanyahu: “We will be the first country to exit the coronavirus era”.
•  There are 658.958 cases of COVID-19 in Romania, 4.951 confirmed yesterday, and 16.410 people died due to SARS-CoV-2.
• Romania’s prime-minister has asked, on Thursday, for the 932 centers of vaccination to be ready next week, to reach 100.000 vaccinations per day.

Global political-military events

• Donald Trump blames the violent protesters which entered the Capitol Hill by force and says the installation of the new administration will take place on January 20^th on good conditions.
• Steven Sund, the chief of US Capitol Police, has resigned after the violent actions that took place on Wednesday, where four people died and other 52 were hurt.
• China threatens, on Thursday, the US that they will pay if the US ambassador to UN, Kelly Craft, will visit Taiwan in the following days, as the State Department has announced, says AFP.
• Turkey is ready to normalize relations with France, if this is sincerely made, said, on Thursday, in Lisbon, the Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, says AFP. France has blamed Turkey because of its military actions in Nagorno-Karabakh, Libya and Syria and the tensions provoked in the Eastern Mediterranean with Greece and Cyprus.
• Middle East. The US Air Forces have dislocated 4 B-52 bombers in the Gulf area, which flew uninterruptedly for 36 hours, sending a message to Iran, said the Defence Department. It is the fourth mission of this type in the last two months and the first one in 2021.
• Russia has announced the Danish Agency for Energy that it will continue the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, in the exclusive economic area, starting with March 15^th.
• India will buy 56 C-295 transport tactical aircrafts from Airbus, for 2,5 billion dollars, says Hindustam Times.
• Ukraine. The Marines will receive a batch of 60 wheeled armored BTR-4EM carriers, said the Defence Minister, according to local media

Romania’s defence and security

• Budget approved on February 6^th. Prime-minister Florin Catu asked each minister to come with a memorandum with the budgetary needs to approve the budget on February 6^th.
• As you were for the retirement age increase of magistrates. According to a press release, the Justice Minister, Stelian Ion, has changed his mind and does not want to increase the retirement age of magistrates anymore, as he previously proposed, on December 31th 2020.