Normality

A new program of SALT's Thursday Cinema titled "What is normal, anyway?" will kick off on June 2 with a selection of documentary and fiction films from Kazakhstan to Singapore and Japan to Germany and Italy, exploring the notion of normality in a post-pandemic world.

He pointed out that so far he has not said a single word about the events in Montenegro, but that he recognizes the modern mechanism of red herring.

In an emotional farewell speech on Tuesday, Greek infectious disease professor and Health Ministry spokesman Sotiris Tsiodras announced that the televised live briefings on the developments with the novel coronavirus in the country will wind down at the end of the week and be replaced by weekly statements.

Restaurants and churches will reopen in Italy on May 18 as part of a fresh wave of lockdown easing in Europe, but rising coronavirus death tolls in Brazil, South Africa and other parts of the world showed the worst is still to come in many countries.

"At the moment, we have good numbers, that is, we have an obvious drop in the percentage of positive cases of people tested. This morning and last night - below two percent, we will wait until 3 pm. Today, more than 100.000 will be tested, so we have best results in this part of Europe," Brnabic stated in TV Prva's Morning program.

The Turkish government is working on a "normalization plan" to gradually open the country's industries without "losing gains made," Vice President Fuat Oktay has told daily Hürriyet.

Oktay said that even though Turkey is showing a downward trend, it is still early to give good news ahead of Eid al-Fitr holiday, which follows the holy month of Ramadan.

The government is working on a plan to ease some of the restrictions that have been introduced to curb the spread of the coronavirus, with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expected to make announcements next week.

Returning to normal depends a great deal on how Romanians understand to observe the rules and recommendations from the authorities, Prime Minister Ludovic Orban stated on Wednesday, when he made an appeal to Romanians "to hang on." "The President and the Government are analyzing the situation. The President decided to prolong the state of emergency by another 30 days.

The huge pressure on the budget due to the coronavirus pandemic could see civil servants' salaries being reduced in the coming months if the crisis is prolonged.
Finance Minister Christos Staikouras did not rule that out on Friday, but he did note that it is not on the table at the moment.

Just a couple of weeks ago it would have seemed unbelievable that our lives would be overturned; now we think that we may never put the nightmare behind us and return to that recent normality.