What the newspapers say: January 26, 2010

The Social Democratic Party is due to re-elect its leaders on February 20, at the new Congress, one newspaper reads. Elsewhere in the news, the North Pole dropped to Eastern Europe with temperatures way below 0 degrees Celsius. One newspaper marks the first Romanian accusing problems after injecting the anti- A/H1N1 virus.

Cotidianul reads that the Social Democratic Party approved the extraordinary congress on February 20. The party’s honorary President, Ion Iliescu declared that some 1,500 delegates will attend the Congress.

The newspapers read today that 39 leaders of county organizations, who sustain PSD leader Mircea Geoana, reunited at Brasov in the weekend planned to propose February 20 for the congress.

Social Democratic leaders declared that the National Council will be organized on the same day. All newspapers today speculate who will be elected as party leader. Former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase declared that he did not decide whether he will run for a seat or not.

Romania’s frozen and close to reach a historic record of low temperatures, most newspapers read on Tuesday. Gandul reads that the new cold wave increases the costs of natural gas with 10.8 million euro/day.

Romania declared state of emergency due to an alarming low level of natural gas availability. The state of emergency enables the state to take whatever decision to manage the energy crisis. Once activated, the plan needs to have three steps: activating natural gas deposits, limiting industrial activities to the seven big chemical factories and shifting plants to other sources than natural gas.

The national average dropped yesterday to – 17.9 degrees Celsius. The record temperature was at Miercurea Ciuc, of -34.4 degrees Celsius. The historic record, of -38.5 degrees Celsius was registered in 1942.

The newspaper notes that a cold wave affected Eastern Europe as a whole, living behind tens of deaths and paralyzed the economic activities.

Evenimentul Zilei reads that a 30 year old woman got to the hospital with a slight paralysis at her feet, after she was vaccinated with Cantgrip, the anti-A/H1N1 vaccine. This is the first case to present adverse reactions and the situation was confirmed by the local Health authorities.

The woman had the vaccine on January 11 and the following day she started to feel sick. Since then, the situation deteriorated fast. The doctors tried to help her, but their treatments did not work.

A study revealed that over 1,200,000 persons were vaccinated of which 30 reported adverse reactions. In depth research revealed that only 13 cases were directly connected with the vaccine.