National Press Review, November 18

From the România Liberă we learn what 'Christmas gifts Emil Boc has in store for the state workers', quote: "The unitary wage law will be completely applied starting 2012. Until then, the minimum wage could be increased by 70 lei from January 1st, 2011, and state workers could receive 15 percent more from their cut salaries. Also, next year state workers are to face another wave of layoffs".

"The government is preparing new emergency taxes' – writes the Jurnalul Naţional from which I quote 'if the Constitutional Court decides to return to the incomes before the temporary 25 percent reduction, the executive will start taxing all retiring pensions and will lay off more state workers.

Furthermore, all types of bonuses will dissappear. A tax that will surely be approved is the taxing of large fortunes' – claims the Jurnalul Naţional.

The Gândul exclusively presents the fact that "The government is planning on setting the fiscal police, that according to the newspaper will question people about the source of their money".

Starting January 1st, 2011, any person with a living standard that is higher than the income declared will be verified by the Fisc, ANAF president Sorin Blejnar has declared for the Gândul, but who also admitted that he does not know exactly how the people who will be verified will be chosen".

The Gândul has also found out that Bucharest will face winter with tens of demolished streets. Traffic here is already difficult when it snows but this will make it even more so.

The official explanation of the City Hall: 'We dig and we have no idea what we are going to find.' This means major developments in the sewage or water networks, unforseen at the opening of the building site, failure of expropriation. The good news is that serious work will be done, as long as the weather will allow it.

"Merciless war the police department' – writes the Evenimentul Zilei that analyzes 'the conflict between the most powerful police officers today - quaestor Dan Valentin Fătuloiu, state secretary and quaestor Petre Tobă, Chief of Police in Romania, an old war, based on egos".

"How did the town of Cornu, from Prahova, end up having a four million euros gym" – we find out from the România Liberă, specifically that: 'Two firms belonging to the PDL party and the PSD party built one of the most modern gyms in the country at Cornu.

Paradoxically, the countryside gym from Cornu, which is identical to the gym from Izvorani, that was built for the Romanian athletes, after the huge success they ha dat the Olympics in Sidney, is 22% more expensive than this one".

Today, the weekly the Timpul came out, and on the front page it has an article about the housing conditions in romanian hospitals: two in one bed.

"The budgetary austerity, the reduction of the number of beds have generated tens of thousand sardine- pacients, who leave the hospital still sick or even more sick than how they came in. Housing two pacients in one bed has become a habit in european Romania but this situation can only be found in third world countries" – quote from the Timpul.

Translated by: Iris Butnariu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University