National Press Review, 29 August

The heating state aids, the first written test of the autumn session of the baccalaureate and our country's suspension from the green certificates trading – these are some of the topics covered by the newspapers today.

Several poor Romanians will receive financial assistance for heating – the Evenimentul Zilei writes today.

The household consumers whose monthly income per family member is less than RON 615 will receive, on average, state financial support of nearly RON 2,000 during winter.

And people with earnings between RON 615 and 786 per family member will have a 5 percent discount of the invoice value.

The new regulations will be included in the draft Government Ordinance which is to be submitted for approval in this week’s session of the executive.

We read in the same newspaper – the Superior Council of Magistracy, the last throb of the system: today as well, the Superior Council of Magistracy uses the interview method to test the candidates for vacancies in the Supreme Court.

The civil society denounced the lack of transparency of the selection procedure, and Laura Stefan, anti-corruption expert within the Romanian Academic Society, said there was no reasonable explanation to support these interviews except the desire to promote certain people.

The Adevărul wrote about the first written exam of the second session of the baccalaureate.

Nearly 110,000 high school graduates are taking the Romanian language written exam today. Despite the myth according to which the autumn session comes with easier topics, the representatives of the Ministry of Education said that they will not lower the standards.

As for the oral test for Romanian language, the results were poor, just over 18 percent of those attending obtained the "experienced user" qualification.

Also from the Adevărul we learn that a third of the employees of Oltchim Râmnicu Vâlcea will stay home in September because of the lack of working capital and raw materials.

During the next period, the company wants to contract two loans totalling 250 million euros, and the decision will be taken at today’s meeting of the General Shareholders Assembly.

In order to work at its full capacity, the company requires working capital worth 150 million euros.

However, the company also needs a loan of 100 million euros to complete the investments in the petrochemical equipment from Arpechim and to set it to work.

Romania was punished for ‘inaccurate reporting’ of greenhouse gas emissions– the România Liberă writes.

Following the irregularities in preparing the national inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, our country was suspended from trading carbon emission certificates.

The final decision lies with the Compliance Committee of the Kyoto Protocol, it confirms the preliminary conclusions of July 8th and will be in force until the identified problems are solved.

Our country will not only lose money but will also face the distrust of the investors as a consequence of the suspension from the trading in pollution certificates, the journalists from the România Liberă write.

In the Jurnalul Naţional we read that Romanians are among Europe’s fattest people.

Last year we went up to the third place in Europe according to the percentage of overweight people of the total population, after Greece and Yugoslavia.

In 2003, Romania was ranked 23rd in the top, then it climbed 20 positions in just 7 years.

A quarter of Romanians are obese and half of the population is overweight.

A British study conducted by nutritionists with world-wide reputation warns us that in 20 years, the number of obese people in developed countries and in some developing countries will almost double and will come to represent half of the population in case of countries like the United States, the UK, Australia, Mexico or Jordan.

Translated by: Iulia Florescu and Ruxandra Câmpeanu
MA Students, MTTLC, Bucharest University