National Press Review, 18 May

The newspapers in Bucharest follow closely, in the articles on the front page, the evolution of the ‘Strauss-Kahn scandal’.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, from the IMF chair, to the prison chair’, the Jurnalul Naţional reads.

‘Head of the IMF behind bars, along with the gangsters in New York’, the Evenimentul Zilei reads.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn was transferred to the largest prison in the American metropolis.

The world’s most powerful man in the field of finance was placed in a 3.5 m / 4 m cell. The French socialists and the press in the Hexagon, the Jurnalul Naţional also reads, accuse the Americans of fiercely humiliating one of the greatest political personalities in the world.

On the other side of the English Channel, the newspapers ironically describe the sex scandal in which the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is involved, the Adevărul notes and quotes the headline from the British daily ‘The Times’: ‘Liberte, egalite, infidelite’.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn creates disputes between the French media and the Anglo-Saxon one, the Adevărul notes.

The România Liberă makes the same statement: the arrest of the IMF president triggered a real assault of the Anglo-Saxon press against the French manners.

Therefore, according to The guardian, another prestigious British newspaper, the story develops the policy of two parallel worlds in the French media: what is put down in black and white and the reality behind the scene, which they fail to mention.

Other subjects in today’s press. The Evenimentul Zilei publishes today the top salaries within Ministries.

Government employees are not equally paid, there are huge salary discrepancies within ministries.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Regional Development and Tourism are the domains with the highest-paid employees.

At the opposite side, the employees of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Ministry of Culture and National Patrimony receive the lowest average net salaries.

The Adevărul: ‘Who wants to become a policeman and why?’ Hundreds of youngsters applied yesterday to the Police Academy and to the non-commissioned officer schools, while 200 policemen were protesting in the capital against future dismissals. The candidates still consider that the Police will offer them a secure job.

The Adevărul also writes today, on two pages, marked as ‘special’, about the efforts made by the researchers from a sturgeon farm in Călăraşi to rescue the species. The sturgeons are implanted transmitters and released into the Danube.

The action is aimed at observing their movement, their migration route and the marine areas where they eat and winter.

Practically, the Adevărul publishes the ‘Herald’s odyssey’, a sturgeon which was marked in Călăraşi and released into the Danube. The sturgeon reached the Black Sea, it was observed for five months and then, suddenly, the transmitter revealed that Herald broke the surface from a 70 meter depth and travelled for a few kilometres on dry land, which is very unusual, and stopped in the Ukrainian locality Novofedorivka. It was the last stop for Herald; he got into a… restaurant.

Translated by: Mihaela Grigoraş
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University