European Investment Bank to open office in Romania

The European Investment Bank is to open office in Romania on June 7, according to the institution’s representatives.

The inauguration will also be the key moment for launching two major European projects: JASPERS (Joint Assistance in Supporting Projects in European Regions) for consultancy on big infrastructure projects, and JEREMIE (Joint European Resources for Micro to medium Enterprises) to provide assistance for SME’s.

The team that will run the Romanian office is almost complete; a director for the JASPERS is still to be found. On June 7, some European officials with the EIB and the European Reconstruction and Development Bank, and politicians will take part at the inaugural ceremony.

Romania and the EIB signed a memorandum last year that entailed up to 1 bln euro financing for Romanian projects to be granted as co-financing. JASPERS provides the authorities with free assistance from the EIB for the development and the implementation of infrastructure projects. More info on the two projects will be released by the Romanian authorities.

HotNews.ro, Euractiv.ro, May 9, 2007

Frattini “concerned” with Romanian Justice scandals

Franco Frattini, vice president in the European Commission and Justice commissioner, is content with the birth of the National Integrity Agency (ANI), but still expresses his "concern" with the latest evolutions in the Romanian Justice. Hotnews.ro has an exclusive interview with the commissioner's spokesman, Friso Roscam Abbing.

The cause for his concern is the recent gesture of the Justice Minister, Tudor Chiuariu, who demanded the replacement of a major department head in the National Anti Corruption Prosecution Office (DNA), according to Friso Roscam Abbing, the commissioner’s spokesman.

According to Abbing, the last minute modifications were not yet acknowledged by the European officials. The important thing, according to Abbing, is that the parliamentarians made this step.

Still, another important step is for authorities to make sure that the Agency is functional, efficient and works, Abbing believes.

Commissioner Franco Frattini won’t comment on the changes the law suffered, according to Abbing, who also also emphasized that the European Commission is interested in Romania having a ceaseless fight against corruption and in reforming the Justice up to a European level.

At the end of June, the European Commission will issue a report on the way Romania and Bulgaria evolved after their accession to the EU.

Regardless the number of solved corruption cases Romania has, the proof that an anti corruption campaign exists consists in results, Abbing advises.

HotNews.ro, May 9, 2007

ANI Law passed

Senators adopted the law for launching the long expected National Integrity Agency (ANI), an institution designed to check the wealth of politicians and other dignitaries.

During the latest discussions on the law, Senators included in the law some of the amendments suggested by Social Democrats, Liberals, Great Romania representatives, Conservatives and senators of the Hungarian Minority. Everyone but Democrats.

Immediately after the vote, Justice Minister Tudor Chiuariu took the opportunity to state that "adopting this project proves that the anti corruption campaign isn't the work of a single man or a single party".

ANI was one of the most expected institutions, demanded insistently by the European Commission. One of the main attributes of the Agency will be the permanent checking of all dignitaries’ wealth during their mandates.
The law allowing ANI to exist suffered many changes during its conception and was a permanent source of political tensions.

Update
The first amendment adopted by the Senate refers to union labor leaders (presidents, vice presidents, secretaries and accountants) having to declare their wealth.
The second amendment allows ANI inspectors to check on dignitaries' wealth in case there are significant differences between his/her wealth growth and his/her income (more than 10% per year or more than 10,000 euros).
Although the first version of the law would have turned ANI into an independent institution, in the final version, ANI is under Senatorial control. In other words, senators control those who should check their activities.
Other articles:
- Illegally built wealth may be confiscated;
- The articles referring to dignitaries' incompatibilities (also working as lawyers, notaries or juridical counselors) were erased.

HotNews.ro, May 9, 2007

Sleeping Rough in the Queen's Gardens

A farcical furore over Romanians in London reminds us why restricting labour migration in a free Europe is wrongheaded

When Romania and Bulgaria became member states of the European Union in January, one question loomed large in many minds: would the flood of "Polish plumbers" into the labour markets of western member states now be supplemented by a surge of Romanian repairmen and Bulgarian bricklayers?

The answer has not been clear, so far. Gradual news is hard to measure and awkward to report. With no obvious surge, the question seemed to fade from public consciousness.

Then one crisp April morning, Daniel, a 23-year-old Romanian, woke up outdoors in central London. He had spent the night in Hyde Park alongside fellow migrant labourers, in an encampment partly concealed by trees, he said. So went the story from BBC's Newsnight, whose report on Romanian migrants "sleeping rough" invited outrage from viewers.

From a British perspective, the image of migrants camping illegally in the park looked like evidence that especially desperate migrants had begun to arrive.

From a Romanian perspective, it looked worrying, like a gag to stoke anti-immigrant paranoia in another western EU country already taking steps to restrain labour migration from the new EU member states. Britain will allow no more than 20,000 unskilled Romanian workers to join its registered workforce this year.

Daniel, Newsnight's interviewee, told Romanian television journalists that he no longer slept in the park and that he had been paid by the BBC for his interview. The Romanian charge d'affaires in London issued a complaint to the BBC, accusing Newsnight of "stage managing" its report and "stereotyping" its coverage of Romanians, The Times reported.

The BBC has held its ground, leaving the minor media furore in stalemate. But whatever the facts of the report, Newsnight did expose a broader truth. With no published statistics describing post-accession labour migration from Romania and Bulgaria, countries like Britain are unsure about the scale of the influx, and they do not like it.

Uncertainty fuels fears of immigration. Even before we can accurately measure the trend, it is subjected to economically illiterate analysis. A simplified, adversarial view of labour migration takes just two sides into account - wealthy hosts and poor beneficiaries.

Sadly, this is the prevailing view. Even with its restrictions, Britain is a model of economic liberalism compared with most other EU countries on the issue of labour migration. Europe's protectionists need to learn a few lessons.

Firstly, income gaps are not all bad. The average Briton earns ten times more money than the average Romanian. But income disparity does not in itself generate economic negatives. On the contrary, it can provide opportunities. Cynical as it may sound, there is always a market for poor people, and where there is demand for low-wage workers, there will be supply.

Secondly, material factors are not the only factors at work. An important one, almost entirely overlooked, is culture. For example, those who have warned that hundreds of thousands of Romanians will cross the English Channel overlook the fact that Britain is hardly a natural destination for Romanians.

Romania is a Latin country like Italy and Spain, one big reason why more than 1.5 million Romanians work there - providing, incidentally, much-needed support for Spain's economic growth spurt.

Read full article at BIRN.eu.com

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, Adina Postelnicu, May 9, 2007

Prosecutors under attack

Justice Minister, Tudor Chiuariu, accused the head of one of the Anti Corruption Prosecution Office (DNA) departments of being too soft in his anti graft actions and demanded his replacement.

Doru Florin Tulus, the "soft prosecutor" handles most of the files involving politicians, will be informed on May 16 on the decision took by the Judges Supreme Council (CSM). The DNA head, Daniel Morar, says the initiative of the Justice Minister came without any previous consultations.

Beside all scandals derived from this interference of the Justice Ministry, Hotnews.ro has the official reactions of the public figures involved.

Doru Tulus: "It's a political move"
The DNA deputy chief, Doru Tulus, said on Tuesday that Chiuariu's demand is has a political motivation. "There was no pressure put on me until this morning. I don't know if such pressure existed in other cases. I have no idea what I am accused of", said Tulus, referring tot he lack of motivation in Chiuariu's gesture.

Democrat Party chief, Emil Boc, believes that the move comes as an attempt to block major files instrumented by the DNA. "It is an attack against the Constitutional basics and the state of law", said Boc.

Tudor Chiuariu: "Morar lies"
The Justice Minister says he tries to keep the DNA away from the political games. "In case the DNA head, Daniel Morar, claims otherwise, he lies", said Chiuariu on Tuesday.

Former Justice Minister, Monica Macovei: "His demand should have come along with some explanations. The lack of arguments shows that it's about politics, after all. He should withdraw his demand and resign or be sacked".

Transparency International: "There are no grounds for revoking Doru Tulus"
Transparency International Romania issued a protest against the Justice Minister's attempt to revoke Doru Tulus from his function.

In a press release, Transparency International Romania considers that revoking a prosecutor isn't possible without first analyzing a situation and discussing the matter with him.

Daniel Morar, the chief of DNA, announced he will submit an official complaint at the Judges' Supreme Council, accusing Chiuariu with interfering with the Justice process: "Chiuariu asked me not to finish any files involving politicians as long as president Traian Basescu is suspended", said Morar.

HotNews.ro, May 9, 2007

Russian gas pipeline to cross Bulgaria

The Russian gas giant Gazprom intends to built a natural gas pipeline across Bulgaria, so that Russia would be enabled to provide its gas to the Southern and Central Europe. In case the construction project becomes real, Bulgaria gains an important position on the Balkans gas market, says Rumen Ovcharov, the Bulgarian Energy Minister.

Bulgaria would earn some 2 billion dollars each year from the gas transit, instead of the current 600 million. The announcement was made the same day the former EU reporter for Bulgaria, Geoffrey Van Orden, warned on Bulgaria's increasing dependence on the Russian gas.

Gazprom delivered 3.2 million cubic meters of natural gas towards Bulgaria in 2006, most of it in transit towards Turkey, Greece and Macedonia.

HotNews.ro, May 9, 2007

Wordpress Plugins & Tutorials: Your Pick

Depending on your needs and professional skills, the choice of an optimal weblog engine can be quite time-consuming. There are many options, and selecting the best engine, you should know exactly what you’d like to have and which level of flexibility you’d like to achieve.

Among dozens of options, Wordpress remains the most popular weblog engine out there. It is simple, powerful, extensible and flexible. There are literally thousands of plugins, themes, tutorials and related articles describing the ways to optimize Wordpress for publisher’s needs and achieve the best possible performance of the blog.

You know them, because you use them and because you’ve searched for them once you needed them. In this post we’d like to give you an opportunity to share your knowledge and help us to create the essential list of Wordpress life-savers - plug-ins, ideas, tips and useful tutorials you need to have ready to hand developing web-sites upon Wordpress.

Begin: Date: 29.06.2007. Time: 08:00:00 EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) / 14:00 CEST (Central European Summer Time).

End: Date: 30.06.2007. Time: 08:00:00 EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) / 14:00 CEST (Central European Summer Time).

Folks, it’s your turn now. You have 24 hours.

How can I contribute?

Submit your best suggestions in comments. Please share one or more life-savers you use permanently using our comment form. Select the best ones, the ones you really couldn’t live without. Please provide the URL, the problem it solves and a brief description of the tool.

We’ll update this post permanently over the next 24 hours. During the next 24 hours we’ll scan through each and every one of the comments, select the best suggestions, add them to the list and provide a brief description of the tools (with or without screenshot). Of course, we’ll also directly link to the person who has submitted the suggestion.

We need your support. To make sure this post will provide web-developers with the best possible hints, we need your support. Please vote for us using the buttons at the top of this post, making sure this article reaches as many web-developers as possible and therefore offers the highest quality. Spread the word in your weblog.

Contribute: helping other developers, you help yourself. Please share your knowledge. Help us to help developers seeking for solutions you’ve already found once you needed them. And get solutions from other developers, ready to contribute to this post as well as you do.

You can submit your own work. You can also recommend plugins you’ve written and ideas you had, as long as they are useful. However, please don’t provide us with lists of Wordpress plugins and tutorials - we know them already.

Spam will be blacklisted. Every comment spam will be blacklisted manually, so the link will never appear on Smashing Magazine again.

Share your knowledge, folks. We’ll do the rest.

Wordpress Functional Plugins

• Include AdSense and YPN ads automatically. AdSense-Deluxe offers advanced options for managing the automatic insertion of Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads to your WordPress posts. (TheBlogJoint.com)
• Use a lightbox. Lightbox 2.0 overlay images on the current page for WordPress. You can turn it on and all images are now working with it. This version of lightbox – Lightbox version 2.0 uses Prototype JavaScript Framework and Scriptaculous Effects Library. (Yehia Nada)
• Use an instant comments editor. WP Ajax Edit Comments allows users and admins alike to edit comments on a post. Users can edit their own comments for a period specified by the admin, and admins can edit all post comments. What better way to show reader appreciation than letting the readers edit their own typos? (AJ)
• Use a code cleaner. HTML Purified will not only remove all malicious code (better known as XSS) with a thoroughly audited, secure yet permissive whitelist, it will also make sure your documents are standards compliant, something only achievable with a comprehensive knowledge of W3C’s specifications. (Edward Z. Jang)
• Use an audio-player. Audioplayer makes it very easy to play mp3 files within your posts. (Yehia Nada)
• Use an enhanced admin interface. Admin Drop-Down Menu transforms admin menu in a quick drop-down menu; you can reach any admin page in one click, instead of first clicking on the first level link (”Manage” for example) and then only on a submenu link (”Comments“). (ozh)
• Use an enhanced comment form. PXS Mail Form creates a mail form with multipart verification, various messages and an auto redirect on successful send. It is much more easy to contact with website author. Alternative: Contact Form v2.0. (TheBlogJoint.com)
• Use a post star rating. Post Star Rating enables users to rate posts of your weblog.
• Use a search-and-replace tool. Search Regex adds a powerful set of search and replace functions to WordPress. These go beyond the standard searching capabilities, and allow you to search and replace almost any data stored on your site. In addition to simple searches you have the full power of PHP’s regular expressions at your disposal. (Sassan)
• Use a spam-filter to prevent spam in your comments. Spam Karma 2 Akismet Plugin is a standard solution for preventing spam comments. (Cory Miller)
• Use a stylesheet switcher. CSS Ajax Switcher combines the power of Server Side processing and DOM scripting to swap style sheets on the fly with the power of Ajax. If JavaScript? is disabled - UDASSS degrades gracefully to improve your website accessibility. Needless to say, it is very sexy indeed. (Dan Cameron)
• Use a tagging system. Simple Tagging is a smart, quick and powerful tagging plugin with high performance and low server requirements.
• Use and control RSS subscription in a smart way.. Feedburner Plugin. Forwards all feed traffic to Feedburner while letting through some important User-Agents. (Andreas)
• Use caching to reduce the server usage. WP-Cache 2.0 an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make your site much faster and responsive. It works by caching Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code and then building the page from the database. (Brian)
• Use CAPTCHA to prevent spam. Anti-Spam Image Plugin works perfectly with users who have cookies disabled, users can pick random words to display. Alternative: reCAPTCHA. (redwall-hp, Max)
• Use maths to prevent spam. Anti-Spam Image Plugin asks the visitor making the comment to answer a simple math question. This is intended to prove that the visitor is a human being and not a spam robot. (Tobbi)
• Use validation to prevent trackback spam. Simple Trackback Validation performs simple but very effective tests on all incoming trackbacks in order to stop trackback spam. (Tobbi)
• Use comments subscription for your posts. Subscribe to Comments is a robust plugin that enables commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent entries. The plugin includes a full-featured subscription manager that your commenters can use to unsubscribe to certain posts, block all notifications, or even change their notification e-mail address! (redwall-hp)
• Use feeds to write posts in a smart way. WP-o-Matic allow you to create posts automatically from feeds. With its simple interface, you just type in the feed url, select in which categories you want to create the posts, and you’re ready to go. (Charlie Park)
• Use head meta tags for search engines. Head-Meta Description provides an automatic meta description tag for your blog, inserting a dynamic description depending on the query-type (i.e. page you’re on). Some search engines are supposed to love this tag, so I guess we should, too.
• Use the search functionality. Search Everything adds search functionality with little setup. Including options to search pages, attachments, drafts, comments and custom fields (metadata). (Dan Cameron)
• Provide an enhanced RSS-feed.. Feedburner Plugin. Forwards all feed traffic to Feedburner while letting through some important User-Agents. (Andreas)
• Create and manage Custom Fields on the fly. Better Feed allows you to enhance your feeds with several highly customisable features. (ozh)
• Create archives in a smart and sexy way. Extended Live Archives implements a dynamic, AJAXified way of digging into the archives of a blog. (TheBlogJoint.com)
• Create data backups on the fly. WordPress Database Backup setups your backups to occur at almost any imaginable frequency. (Yehia Nada)
• Create various profiles for your users. Role Manager allows you to define and manage multiple subscriber profiles - called Roles and their Capabilities. Also you can create new Roles and Capabilities. (Saioa)
• Define and execute your own functions in your posts. Code Markup makes it easy to include program code samples in your posts. You can even include HTML markup in the code sample; Code Markup magically knows which characters should be displayed as code and which should be rendered as HTML. (Dan)
• Execute php-commands in your posts. Exec-PHP. The Exec-PHP plugin allows tags inside the content or excerpt of your posts and pages to be executed just as in usual PHP files.
• Generate Google Sitemaps automatically. Google Sitemaps Generator generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. XML-Sitemaps can help you to get indexed by the major search engines. (Cory Miller)

Displaying Data with Wordpress

• You can display popular posts. Popularity contest lets you automatically highlight your best posts to your readers. It keeps a count of your post, category and archive views, comments, trackbacks, etc. and uses them to determine which of your posts are most popular. (Staska)
• You can stick a post. Adhesive allows you to easily mark certain posts as “Sticky”. Sticky posts appear at the top of the page when WordPress displays several posts. (Staska)
• You can help landing users find what they need. Landing sites 1.3 highlights search queries users were using in search engines to find your site. When visitors is referred to your site from a search engine, they are definitely looking for something specific - often they just roughly check the page they land on and then closes the window if what they are looking for isn’t there. Why not help them by showing them related posts to their search on your blog? (TheBlogJoint.com)
• You can use enhanced pagination. WP-PageNavi. This plugin adds a more advanced paging navigation your WordPress blog. Example: Pages (17): [1] 2 3 4 » … Last ». (Chris)
• You can show similar and related posts. Similar Posts. This plugin displays a list of posts which are related or similar to the current post. Alternative: Related entries. (Chris)
• You can create archives in a smart way. Smart Archives for WordPress will allow you to display your archives in a much “cleaner” format. You can see it in action on my archives page. You’ll notice that everything on the page is hyperlinked (years, months, posts) and that all of the respective links are future-proofed. (redwall-hp)
• You can create footnotes in your blog posts automatically. WP Footnotes lets you create footnotes in your blog “on the fly”. Also paginated posts are supported. (Chris)
• You can create sidenotes automatically. fQuick enables the user to add small custom quicklinks to the sidebar. With RSS feed for easy syndication. Tutorial. lets you create footnotes in your blog “on the fly”. Also paginated posts are supported. (TheBlogJoint.com)
• You can have more control over title presentation. Optimal Title mirrors the function of wp_title() exactly, but moves the position of the ’separator’ to after the title rather than before. This allows you to have your blog name tacked on to the end of the page title instead of having it appear first.
• You can enhance WordPress as a CMS. CMS Enabling Plugins: Wordpress contains almost all the features you need to get it going as a CMS out of the box. However, you’ll find that there are a few things missing that make up the final pieces of the puzzle. Here’s an overview of the five most useful plugins I’ve found, and the part they play in making Wordpress a butt-kicking CMS. (Jim)
• You can use sIFR for your headlines. CG-FlashyTitles a drop-in Plugin for sIFR 2.0 Flash-based title replacements. (TheBlogJoint.com)
• You can show your favourite books automatically. Now Reading allows you to maintain a virtual library of books. Display which you’ve read, which you’re currently reading, and which you plan to read; add metadata to describe them; write reviews detailing what you thought of them. (Chris)
• You can show your current events automatically. Event Calendar lets you manage future events as an online calendar. Display upcoming events in a dynamic calendar, on a listings page, or as a list in the sidebar. (Chris)
• You can use gravatars in your comments. Gravatars adds an author’s icon functionality in comments. (TheBlogJoint.com)
• You can use podcasts in your posts. Podpress: all-singing, all-dancing podcasting tool for WordPress. (jay mcdonald)

Wordpress Tutorials

• Separate users’ comments and admin’s comments.
  Comment Styling in Wordpress and How-to style WordPress author comments. In the default of most themes, all comments look the same. There have been ways of changing the appearance before using plugins and hacks - and this is more of the same. Hopefully though it’ll give you some extra flexibility.
• Paginate your articles.
  Styling Page-Links. Did you know you could split a single post up into different web pages? Using the Next-Page Quicktag from the Write Post Panel, you can break a single post up into different web pages.
• Use time stamps.
  How to Take Full Advantage of Your Post Timestamp. In Wordpress you can set the date for something into the future—think of it as a dorky sort of time travel—so that you can write (if you wanted to) weeks worth of posts in an afternoon. Wordpress will “update” your blog by posting your content at the time you specify each day. Here’s how to do it. (Ryan Imel)
• Use comment highlighting.
  Author Comment Highlighting and Author Highlighting Through Theme Options provide information about styling author’s comments.

Resources, articles

• How to create WordPress theme from scratch: a series of 16 articles, which shows how to create WordPress themes from the very beginning to the very end. (Small Potato)
• Things you should know when displaying pages in Wordpress: quick guide on things Wordpress users should be knowing with listing Pages.
• Things you should know when using post excerpt: detailed tutorial on how-to use excerpt and where to use them.
• How-to turn visitors into returning visitors: various requisite Wordpress plugins to make visitors feel at ease.
• The proper way to write code in your blog posts: how to write code in posts so that the blog doesn’t break when displaying them.
• Quick shooting stats of your Wordpress blog: displaying the number of posts, comments and categories one has on his Wordpress blog.