National Press Review, 3 May

The România Liberă – ‘Ten years of chase ended with a 40 minute assault. World’s number one terrorist, killed in his fortress’; the Jurnalul Naţional – ‘Chased, speared, liquidated! - Americans took ten years to find bin Laden and 40 minutes to liquidate him’;

The Adevărul – ‘great terrorist, liquidated after 9 years, 7 months and 20 days; the Evenimentul Zilei – ‘Osama bin Laden: death of a symbol of global terrorism’ – these were the titles that the readers encounter on the front page of the newspapers published today.

The articles turned on both sides the information that have gone around the world yesterday, but the strangest one was that the most wanted man on the planet had not been in some hovel in the mountains of Afghanistan, but in a villa of one million dollars, not far from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and two steps away from a major army garrison and the Military Academy. The papers also noted that the coverage of this story did not omit the custom ingredients of the American marketing.

‘Head of SRI Alba “searched” by DIICOT’, the România Liberă headlined, revealing a major surprise in the case of theft of equipment from European Union countries, namely: the head of SRI Alba was arrested yesterday by the DIICOT prosecutors from Hunedoara to encourage a group dealing with the theft of agricultural equipment from abroad.

Basically, the head of the SRI together with a police sub-commissioner have endangered a large operation, because they informed the thieves about the raid of the prosecutors.

From Dacian Cioloş, European Commissioner for the Agriculture, who gave an exclusive interview for the Adevărul, we found out that: ‘Romania concerned the European Commission regarding the low absorption of EU funds.’ Romania does not have a vision of agriculture and rural development.

A national strategy in this respect is necessary. Accessing EU funds is affected by the internal bureaucracy and corruption. The beneficiaries are suffocated by papers and assaulted by controls, the law is vague, some officials ask for money to process the files more quickly or recommend certain consulting firms.

All of these could reduce this type of financing throughout the Union’, Dacian Cioloş warned. The European Commissioner pointed out that other countries have much easier legislations in this field, that facilitate their access to important European funds for agricultural development.

The Jurnalul Naţional made its readers a rare surprise through the interview with Academician Solomon Marcus, a great mathematician, but he also has outstanding works in other fields such as linguistics, semiotics, philosophy, history, science and education. Among other things, the academician believed that the Romanian education is a failure as long as is taught by old methods. In his view, there are too few teachers who manage to determine their students, through play and humor, to love math and poetry.

Professor Solomon Marcus insisted on the organic need of reading, which should be inspired to children by the school, and considered that ‘A proper education should show the students the solidarity of math and poetry. Because of inertia and convenience though, this does not happen.

The same goes for the Internet. As he remains uneducated, the young will surf on the Internet in the zone of easy entertainment, of small curiosities. Without education you can get lost!’, Academician Solomon Marcus said in an interview in the the Jurnalul Naţional, which is worth reading.

Translated by: Iulia Florescu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University