05 November 2021

Morning headlines – November 5th 2021

Florin Jipa

Image source: US Navy

Coronavirus and vaccines

  • Vaccination in Romania: In the last 24 hours, more than 82.000 people got vaccinated. Totally, more than 7.19 million people got the vaccine, with more than 6.44 getting both doses and 947.000 of them getting the third dose.
  • Coronavirus in Romania: In the last 24 hours, there were recorded 8.971 new SARS CoV-2 cases, 434 deaths, and in ICU there are now 1.902 people hospitalized.

Global political and military events

  • Conflict in Ethiopia. Armed rebels from the Tigray and Oromo Liberation Armed Forces groups gathered around Ethiopia to replace the government led by Abiy Ahmed. The US Special Representative, Jeffrey Feltman, is also in Ethiopia, where he is trying to avoid the armed confrontations. (CNN)
  • The US asked the Sudanese armed forces to reestablish the civilian government. The US State Secretary Antony Blinken asked the Sudanese Armed Forces chief, general Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, on Thursday, to reestablish a civilian government after last month’s coup d’état. (AP)
  • Lithuania follows Poland’s example and is building a fence at the border with Belarus. Lithuania started to build a metallic fence at the border with Belarus to stop the immigrants. The fence is built on 500 km and will cost 152 million euro. (AFP)
  • Hungary admits it bought the Pegasus spying program. Lajos Kósa, president of the Commission for defence and security in the Hungarian Parliament, has admitted that the Hungarian Home Affairs Ministry bought the NSO Group-produced software, used by many countries to spy on politicians, activists and journalists. (AFP)
  • The US offers a 10 million dollars reward to capture Russian hackers. The United States has announced, on Thursday, that it offers 10 million dollars for information that could led to catching a Russian hackers group specialized in ransomware attacks, DarkSide. (AP)
  • The US intelligence agencies, employees’ crisis. Chris Stewart, member in the Commission for Intelligence of the Representatives Chamber has stated on Thursday that 20% of the employees of the 18 US intelligence agencies are not vaccinated and risk being fired. (AP)
  • The command ship of the American 6th Fleet entered the Black Sea. The USS Mount Whitney command and control ship left the port of Istanbul on Thursday and entered the Black Sea to join the destroyer USS Porter and participate in exercises and missions with countries in the region, including Romania. (US Navy)
  • The US approves the sale of anti-aircraft missiles to Saudi Arabia. The State Department announced on Thursday that it has approved the sale of 280 medium-range missiles, AIM-120C, to Saudi Arabia for $ 650 million. (AP)

Romania's defense and security

  • Prolonged political crisis: Klaus Iohannis postpones consultations for the appointment of a prime minister: "Attempts to form minority governments have not yielded results". (Mediafax)
  • Romania will build small modular reactors. On Thursday, the signing ceremony of the partnership between Romania and the USA took place for the implementation of the SMRs in our country. Cosmin Ghită, CEO of Nuclearelectrica and John L. Hopkins, CEO of NuScale Power signed the Teaming Agreement for the implementation of small modular reactors (SMR) of NuScale type in Romania. (Aleph News)