Romanian today

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Romania’s women’s epee team made up of Ana-Maria Branza, Simona Gherman, Loredana Dinu and Simona Pop on Friday advanced to the quarterfinals of FIE World Fencing Championship 2015 in Moscow.

In the table of 32, Romania easily defeated Turkey 45-15, after which it managed another resounding victory against Switzerland, 45-19.

In the quarterfinals scheduled for Saturday, Romania meets Hungary.

Also of Friday, Romania’s men’s sabre team made up of Tiberiu Dolniceanu, Iulian Teodosiu, Alin Badea and Madalin Bucur, lost the quarterfinal to Italy, 32-45.

In the table of 32, Romania defeated Singapore 45-26, while on Thursday it went on to defeat Belarus 45-34.

Romania has so far won one medal in the FIE World Fencing Championship 2015 in Moscow, the bronze medal in the men’s individual sabre event that went to Tiberiu Dolniceanu. AGERPRES

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Judoka Andreea Chitu brought Romania the second gold medal at the 2015 European Games in Baku (Azerbaijan). Chitu defeated on Thursday France’s Annabelle Euranie in the final of the 52kg weight division.

Chitu entered directly the round of 16, where she beat Israeli Roni Schwartz; then she left behind Italian Odette Giuffrida in the quarterfinal and German Mareen Kraeh in the semifinal.

The judo competition in Baku also stands as European Championships this year, after the spring competition scheduled in Glasgow has been cancelled.
For Andreea Chitu, it was the second European gold, after the medal in Chelyabinsk (Russia) in 2012. She also won silver in the 2013 European Championships in Budapest and bronze last year in Montpellier (France). Her World Championships record also includes one silver medal in Chelyabinsk in 2014 and one bronze in Paris, in 2011.

Romania’s record in the Baku games now stands at ten medals — two gold, four silver and four bronze. AGERPRES

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Romania’s chemistry Olympic team won six medals – two gold, one of which for a perfect score; three silver and one bronze – in the D. Mendeleev International Chemistry Olympiad held May 3-10 in Erevan.

Dumitru Calugaru, 12th grade pupil at Tudor Vladimirescu National College of Targu Jiu 
Photo credit: (c) Angelo BREZOIANU / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

“The gold medals went to Dumitru Calugaru (perfect score), a 12th grader of the Tudor Vladimirescu National College of Targu Jiu, and to Andrei Iliescu, an 11th grader of the Bucharest International High School of Computer Sciences. Both won gold in the previous edition as well. The silver medals went to: Paul Haidu-Gerea (10th grader of the Mircea cel Batran National College of Constanta), Cristian Robert Raclea (11th grader of the Vasile Alecsandri National College of Galati) and to Silvestru-Alexandru Big (12th grader of the Alexandru cel Bun National College of Gura Humorului); the bronze medal went to 12th grader Tiberiu Alexandru Pana of the Mihai Viteazu National College of Ploiesti,” according to a press release of the Romanian Ministry of Education and Scientific Research.

The competition consisted of three examinations, five hours in all, including two theory tests and an experimental/practical test, all of which had a very high difficulty level.

The first theory test comprised eight mandatory items, while the second involved solving a problem — chosen from a set of three — for each of the five sections included: physical chemistry, life sciences, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry and analytical chemistry.

Competing in this edition of the D. Mendeleev International Chemistry Olympiad were 95 students from 15 countries. AGERPRES

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Romanian Calin Nemes riding horse Eros claimed the gold at the three-day Concours Complet International (CCI 1*), while his fellow nationals Cristian Ceausescu, Raul Ilioi and Bogdan Leonte won the Student Riders Nations Cup at the Transylvania Horse Show, the most famed international equestrian competition hosted by Romania, informs a release to AGERPRES.

Photo credit: (c) Transylvania Horse Show website

Competitors and fans from 14 countries participated this weekend in the fifth edition of the Transylvania Horse Show that ran in the Prod village, 16 km from Sighisoara city. The event enjoyed a 4,000-strong audience who came to relax in the heart of nature, enjoy the competition and delve into the secrets of horsemanship.

Transylvania Horse Show featured three types of competitions: Concours Complet International (CCI*); Romanian Cup Eventing — Novices and Pre-novices class, a section intended for young horses and competitors with less experience in eventing competitions; and Student Riders Nations Cup (AIEC Student Riders Nation Cup — Romania 2015), organized together with the Association International des Etudiants Cavaliers (AIEC).

Calin Nemes on horse Eros won the gold in the international eventing with a total score of 67.9; Viorel Bubau on horse Rustic came in second with a score of 95.7 points.

For this section of the competition, the riders had to go through three trials: dressage, obstacles and cross-country.

At the Novices class, Calin Nemes came on top once again, this time on Funny Flight, with 57.6 points. Second was Orsolya Juhasz on Romantic Boy (61.6 points), and Monica Zagan on horse Avalanche (70.3 points) claimed the third position.

At the Pre-novices class, the top rider was Adrian Gherghina on horse Epic (58.7 points), while Timea Kovacs on mount Yavrum was the winner in the Pre-novices Children category (62.7 points).

The Romanian team made up of riders Cristian Ceausescu, Bogdan Leonte and Raul Ilioi won for the first time the Student Riders Nations Cup; team Germany won the silver and Austria — the bronze.

In the individual competition, Austrian student Katharina Wilding won the gold, Belgium’s Kaeye Anne claimed the silver and the bronze went to German student Alexandra von der Leyen.

The Transylvania Horse Show 2011, 2012 and 2014 editions received the AIEC “Competition of the Year” award. AGERPRES

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Romania has already proved that it is a leader in information technology and it is no longer a secret that Romania is the second language spoken in the Microsoft offices around the world, Bruce Andrews, US Deputy Secretary of Commerce said at the Regional Cyber Security Summit taking place at the Parliament Palace in Bucharest.

Photo credit: (c) Alex MICSIK / AGERPRES PHOTO

“I’m honoured to accompany these days to Bucharest a delegation including prestigious companies in the USA, from the IBM to Microsoft and Hewlett Packard. The US sees many opportunities in the further development of relations in the cybersecurity field with Romania. We want to create a much safer Internet cyberspace. One of the best ways to help Romania protect its networks is by continuing to implement new projects. Romania became a leader on the informational technology market. And, when I say this, I will give you just one example: here we have Bitdefender, a Romanian company that launched a revolutionary solution in cybersecurity named Box, strictly designed for domestic users. We already know that Romanian is the second language spoken in the Microsoft offices around the world,” Andrews underscored.

The representatives of the US Commerce Department specified that, in order for the further development of partnerships with Romania, it is important to not have new laws that could stop innovation.

“There is enough room for growth in what the development of partnerships between Romania and the USA is concerned. That’s why it is important to not have new laws that would prevent inter-operability and block innovation. The government and the industrial sector must cooperate smoothly. Cybersecurity is a place that can provide prosperity for both our countries,” said the US official.

The Romanian Government, via the Ministry for Information Society (MSI), together with the US Commerce Department and the Commercial Service of the US Embassy to Bucharest over May 11-13 are organizing at the Parliament Palace the Regional Cybersecurity Summit.

Participating in the event there are 17 Central and South-Eastern European states, either members or non-members of the EU and NATO. These countries will present their policies in what regards cybersecurity and will approach new themes, such as threats and cyber vulnerabilities, the identification of opportunities for international and regional cooperation and they will have an exchange of good practices in the field.

The Bucharest Summit brings together governmental officials, companies and specialists in the cybersecurity field from both the public and private sectors in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, USA and Romania.

At the same time, the US Trade Department and the US Embassy in Bucharest’s Trade Service are conducting a trade mission made of 20 US companies to present solutions they can offer in the field. AGERPRES

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Miron

Miron

Alina Miron, co-counsel on the Thai legal team that is presenting the country’s case in the Preah Vihear land dispute before the world court, smiled in surprise when told she had become a celebrity in Thailand.

Her strong presentation and photogenic appearance on the court’s TV screens have left many people following the case impressed. Also, many are curious about Miron and how she came to be a member of the Thai team.

Thailand’s agent in the case, Virachai Plasai, said that Wednesday’s appearance was Miron’s first before the world court, and that she did a great job of explaining Thailand’s position on the maps Cambodia is using to make its case.

“I trust her when it comes to presenting this important topic to the court, and she did an impressive job,” he said.

Virachai said he had spent a long time studying the maps with Miron, adding that her knowledge was very helpful. Miron is a Romanian with a solid educational background in public international law at universities in France, including the Universite Paris-Ouest Nanterre la Defense, Universite Paris-Ouest la Defense and Universite des Sciences Sociales.

In the world court case, Miron is serving as assistant to the team’s lead counsel, Prof Alain Pellet. She has worked with Pellet on many cases, advocating on behalf of Slovenia, Russia, Greece and Nicaragua.

Miron speaks many languages. Romanian is her mother tongue, but she also speaks French and English fluently. Her command of Italian is also good.

Thai social media have been gripped by the “Alina Miron fever”. Bloggers, along with Thai senators attending the trial at The Hague in the Netherlands, have praised Miron for her sound reasoning, which they believe will convince the world that Cambodia does not have the right to a 4.6-square-kilometre disputed area near the temple.

Appointed Senator Somchai Sawaengkarn posted a message on Facebook praising Miron’s politeness and her technique of reasoning. He said her use of pictures and maps to make comparisons have made Thailand confident of winning the case. “[Another senator] could not help but compliment her, telling her in person that she was ‘excellent’,” Somchai said.

Senator Kamnoon Sithisamarn said Miron demolished Cambodia’s argument, which is based on the Annex I map, dismissing it and turning the courtroom’s attention to maps introduced by Thailand in the 1962 case.

A blogger called “Sai Trong Paksanam” said Miron pointed out credible and technical problems with Cambodia’s Annex I map, saying it has been altered and contradicted geographically. Miron said the Thai team has found there are six different versions of the Annex I map.

The blogger received 5,000 “likes” and 2,310 “shares” 22 hours after posting.

Sermsuk Kasitipradit, a Thai PBS reporter, posted pictures of Miron and a message on his Facebook page and received 700 “likes”.

“Miron fever” also gripped the Pantip website, thanks to blogger “BaaD” with his blog “Netizens praise Miron after her taking to pieces Cambodia’s Annex I map”.

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  • Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley ( Romania ) and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade.

Rumyana Kostadinova Ivanova and Marius Amarie

LIVING SPACE Artifacts from the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills are presented in an exhibition, “The Lost World of Old Europe,” at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. More Photos »

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Marius Amarie

WOMEN IN SOCIETY A fired clay Cucuteni figurine, from 4050-3900 B.C.More Photos >

For 1,500 years, starting earlier than 5000 B.C., they farmed and built sizable towns, a few with as many as 2,000 dwellings. They mastered large-scale copper smelting, the new technology of the age. Their graves held an impressive array of exquisite headdresses and necklaces and, in one cemetery, the earliest major assemblage of gold artifacts to be found anywhere in the world.

The striking designs of their pottery speak of the refinement of the culture’s visual language. Until recent discoveries, the most intriguing artifacts were the ubiquitous terracotta “goddess” figurines, originally interpreted as evidence of the spiritual and political power of women in society.

New research, archaeologists and historians say, has broadened understanding of this long overlooked culture, which seemed to have approached the threshold of “civilization” status. Writing had yet to be invented, and so no one knows what the people called themselves. To some scholars, the people and the region are simply Old Europe.

The little-known culture is being rescued from obscurity in an exhibition, “The Lost World of Old Europe: the Danube Valley, 5000-3500 B.C.,” which opened last month at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. More than 250 artifacts from museums in Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania are on display for the first time in the United States. The show will run through April 25.

At its peak, around 4500 B.C., said David W. Anthony, the exhibition’s guest curator, “Old Europe was among the most sophisticated and technologically advanced places in the world” and was developing “many of the political, technological and ideological signs of civilization.”

Dr. Anthony is a professor of anthropology at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., and author of “The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World.” Historians suggest that the arrival in southeastern Europe of people from the steppes may have contributed to the collapse of the Old Europe culture by 3500 B.C.

At the exhibition preview, Roger S. Bagnall, director of the institute, confessed that until now “a great many archaeologists had not heard of these Old Europe cultures.” Admiring the colorful ceramics, Dr. Bagnall, a specialist in Egyptian archaeology, remarked that at the time “Egyptians were certainly not making pottery like this.”

A show catalog, published by Princeton University Press, is the first compendium in English of research on Old Europe discoveries. The book, edited by Dr. Anthony, with Jennifer Y. Chi, the institute’s associate director for exhibitions, includes essays by experts from Britain, France, Germany, the United States and the countries where the culture existed.

Dr. Chi said the exhibition reflected the institute’s interest in studying the relationships of well-known cultures and the “underappreciated ones.”

Although excavations over the last century uncovered traces of ancient settlements and the goddess figurines, it was not until local archaeologists in 1972 discovered a large fifth-millennium B.C. cemetery at Varna, Bulgaria, that they began to suspect these were not poor people living in unstructured egalitarian societies. Even then, confined in cold war isolation behind the Iron Curtain, Bulgarians and Romanians were unable to spread their knowledge to the West.

The story now emerging is of pioneer farmers after about 6200 B.C. moving north into Old Europe from Greece and Macedonia, bringing wheat and barley seeds and domesticated cattle and sheep. They established colonies along the Black Sea and in the river plains and hills, and these evolved into related but somewhat distinct cultures, archaeologists have learned. The settlements maintained close contact through networks of trade in copper and gold and also shared patterns of ceramics.

The Spondylus shell from the Aegean Sea was a special item of trade. Perhaps the shells, used in pendants and bracelets, were symbols of their Aegean ancestors. Other scholars view such long-distance acquisitions as being motivated in part by ideology in which goods are not commodities in the modern sense but rather “valuables,” symbols of status and recognition.

Noting the diffusion of these shells at this time, Michel Louis Seferiades, an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, suspects “the objects were part of a halo of mysteries, an ensemble of beliefs and myths.”

In any event, Dr. Seferiades wrote in the exhibition catalog that the prevalence of the shells suggested the culture had links to “a network of access routes and a social framework of elaborate exchange systems — including bartering, gift exchange and reciprocity.”

Over a wide area of what is now Bulgaria and Romania, the people settled into villages of single- and multiroom houses crowded inside palisades. The houses, some with two stories, were framed in wood with clay-plaster walls and beaten-earth floors. For some reason, the people liked making fired clay models of multilevel dwellings, examples of which are exhibited.

A few towns of the Cucuteni people, a later and apparently robust culture in the north of Old Europe, grew to more than 800 acres, which archaeologists consider larger than any other known human settlements at the time. But excavations have yet to turn up definitive evidence of palaces, temples or large civic buildings. Archaeologists concluded that rituals of belief seemed to be practiced in the homes, where cultic artifacts have been found.

The household pottery decorated in diverse, complex styles suggested the practice of elaborate at-home dining rituals. Huge serving bowls on stands were typical of the culture’s “socializing of food presentation,” Dr. Chi said.

At first, the absence of elite architecture led scholars to assume that Old Europe had little or no hierarchical power structure. This was dispelled by the graves in the Varna cemetery. For two decades after 1972, archaeologists found 310 graves dated to about 4500 B.C. Dr. Anthony said this was “the best evidence for the existence of a clearly distinct upper social and political rank.”

Vladimir Slavchev, a curator at the Varna Regional Museum of History, said the “richness and variety of the Varna grave gifts was a surprise,” even to the Bulgarian archaeologist Ivan Ivanov, who directed the discoveries. “Varna is the oldest cemetery yet found where humans were buried with golden ornaments,” Dr. Slavchev said.

More than 3,000 pieces of gold were found in 62 of the graves, along with copper weapons and tools, and ornaments, necklaces and bracelets of the prized Aegean shells. “The concentration of imported prestige objects in a distinct minority of graves suggest that institutionalized higher ranks did exist,” exhibition curators noted in a text panel accompanying the Varna gold.

Yet it is puzzling that the elite seemed not to indulge in private lives of excess. “The people who donned gold costumes for public events while they were alive,” Dr. Anthony wrote, “went home to fairly ordinary houses.”

Copper, not gold, may have been the main source of Old Europe’s economic success, Dr. Anthony said. As copper smelting developed about 5400 B.C., the Old Europe cultures tapped abundant ores in Bulgaria and what is now Serbia and learned the high-heat technique of extracting pure metallic copper.

Smelted copper, cast as axes, hammered into knife blades and coiled in bracelets, became valuable exports. Old Europe copper pieces have been found in graves along the Volga River, 1,200 miles east of Bulgaria. Archaeologists have recovered more than five tons of pieces from Old Europe sites.

An entire gallery is devoted to the figurines, the more familiar and provocative of the culture’s treasures. They have been found in virtually every Old Europe culture and in several contexts: in graves, house shrines and other possibly “religious spaces.”

One of the best known is the fired clay figure of a seated man, his shoulders bent and hands to his face in apparent contemplation. Called the “Thinker,” the piece and a comparable female figurine were found in a cemetery of the Hamangia culture, in Romania. Were they thinking, or mourning?

Many of the figurines represent women in stylized abstraction, with truncated or elongated bodies and heaping breasts and expansive hips. The explicit sexuality of these figurines invites interpretations relating to earthly and human fertility.

An arresting set of 21 small female figurines, seated in a circle, was found at a pre-Cucuteni village site in northeastern Romania. “It is not difficult to imagine,” said Douglass W. Bailey of San Francisco State University, the Old Europe people “arranging sets of seated figurines into one or several groups of miniature activities, perhaps with the smaller figurines at the feet or even on the laps of the larger, seated ones.”

Others imagined the figurines as the “Council of Goddesses.” In her influential books three decades ago, Marija Gimbutas, an anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, offered these and other so-called Venus figurines as representatives of divinities in cults to a Mother Goddess that reigned in prehistoric Europe.

Although the late Dr. Gimbutas still has an ardent following, many scholars hew to more conservative, nondivine explanations. The power of the objects, Dr. Bailey said, was not in any specific reference to the divine, but in “a shared understanding of group identity.”

As Dr. Bailey wrote in the exhibition catalog, the figurines should perhaps be defined only in terms of their actual appearance: miniature, representational depictions of the human form. He thus “assumed (as is justified by our knowledge of human evolution) that the ability to make, use and understand symbolic objects such as figurines is an ability that is shared by all modern humans and thus is a capability that connects you, me, Neolithic men, women and children, and the Paleolithic painters in caves.”

Or else the “Thinker,” for instance, is the image of you, me, the archaeologists and historians confronted and perplexed by a “lost” culture in southeastern Europe that had quite a go with life back before a single word was written or a wheel turned.

Published: November 30, 20097
Sources: New York Times
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Dacia exceeded the threshold of 500,000 vehicles sold worldwide in 2014, and in Romania it recorded higher sales, thus having consolidated its leading position on the car market, with a share of over 31%, Jan Ptacek, the CEO of Renault Commercial Roumanie, announced early this week.

Photo credit (c) RAZVAN CHIRITA / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

‘2014 was an exceptional year for Dacia, with total sales of 511,465 units. We are thus confirming the trend that Dacia committed to many years ago,’ Ptacek told a press conference.

For 2015, Jean Ptacek announced the launch of the Stepway versions of the Lodgy and Dokker models.

‘After renewing its offer of products, completed in 2014 by introducing the limited series Logan 10 Years, Dacia will launch in 2015, on the Romanian market, the Stepway versions of the Lodgy and Dokker models. At the same time, the upgrading of Dacia dealerships will continue,’ said Ptacek.

Ptacek highlighted that Dacia recorded the highest increase in sales amongst the generalist carmakes in Western Europe.

“With sales amounting to 511,465 units, Dacia recorded in 2014 the best commercial performance in its history. The Romanian carmake thus joins the small club of carmakers that sell more than half a million cars annually. This result, higher by 19% than that recorded in 2013, allowed the Dacia carmake to increase its presence on most markets where it is sold,’ said the representative of Renault Romania.

He described the results of Romania as an ‘excellent performance,’ pointing out that on a market of new vehicles that continues to stand at lower than 100,000 units per year, well below its real potential, Dacia managed in 2014 to increase sales by 19% to 29,625 units, compared to 24,890 vehicles sold in the previous year.

‘This result ensures for Dacia a market share of 31.44% and strengthens its leading position in Romania,’ said Ptacek, adding that each Dacia model was in 2014 the leader in its segment.

AGERPRES

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Insights from the successful five-year-old startup which creates and measures interactive video ads

Emi Gal founder Brainient
 Emi Gal, founder of Brainient. Photograph: AR/Albion Drive

Company name: Brainient

Company age: 4.5 years

Number of employees: 40

Elevator pitch: Create, deliver and measure interactive video ads across any device.

How, when and where did you start out?

Brainient started out from a failure. About a year before I started Brainient, I founded an online TV channel called BrainTV – “TV for smart people”. After a year of building a production studio, hiring presenters, editors and producing a number of web shows, I realised we were never going to build a big enough audience to be able to actually make money. BrainTV failed, but there was a feature that was very popular – the ability to interact with the shows using various interactive features. So I decided to build a company all about interactive videos. It worked out quite well.

What digital technologies and innovations have helped you to establish and grow your company?

One of our unfair competitive advantages has been that our engineering team is located in Romania, which has enabled us to hire brilliant engineers much more cost effectively than in London. We wouldn’t have been able to do it if not for the wonderful collaboration tools out there – everything from Skype to Hangouts, Trello and so on. The world isn’t flat, but the internet is and that’s helped us a lot.

Are you a global company? And if so how have you been able to grow this side of your business?

We have customers that run campaigns in eight different markets, from Brazil to Singapore. We service all these clients from our two main offices in London and Bucharest, and have sales representatives or partners in many other locations.

Startups today can be both global and local from day one, thanks to things like the App Store (anyone in the world can buy your app from day one) or Skype In (create a physical phone number in Singapore that forwards to your UK mobile).

How and at what point did you begin to raise finance for the business?

We raised a seed round (£473,000) in 2009 and a Series A (£1.1m) in 2012. We raised the seed round when we knew we had product/market fit (had a product that the market wanted, for those uninitiated in startup slang) and raised the Series A when we were ready to scale our sales & marketing team.

Deciding when to raise capital for your business is a trick question that doesn’t have a right or wrong answer. The best way to do it is to think in milestones, and always raise 30% more than what you think you need in order to reach the next milestone.

What one piece of advice would you give to a home business or startup wanting to gain a foothold in your space?

There’s a wonderful speech Winston Churchill gave at a graduation speech in 1941, in the context of the second world war. He ended his speech with: “Never give in, never give in, never, never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty. Never give in to nothing except to convictions of honour and good faith. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

So, I’d say to never give in.

Author: 

sources: theguardian

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The Romanian tennis player Simona Halep has won the 500,000-dollar WTA tournament in Shenzhen (China) on Saturday, after sweeping Timea Bacsinszky (Switzerland), #8 seed, 6-2, 6-2.

Photo: (c) Grigore Popescu / AGERPRES Photo

Halep (23, #3 WTA), the main favourite of the Open, did her best game in Shenzhen and topped her 9th WTA title, after those in Nuremberg, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Budapest, New Haven, Moscow, Sofia (all in 2013), Doha and Bucharest (both in 2014).
The final in Shenzhen was the number 15 for the Romanian tennis player, after losing two games in Fes (2010, 2011), in Brussels (2012), in Madrid, Roland Garros and the Tour of Champions (all in 2014).

For Simona, this was her first tournament with her new technical staff, the Swedish Thomas Hogstedt and the Romanian Victor Ionita.

Simona Halep, who received 280 WTA points for the Shenzhen title, was rewarded by the former Chinese great champion Na Li with a 111,163 USD check, while Bacsinszky received 55,323 USD check and 180 WTA points.
Simona is to play next week in Sydney Australian Open (731,000 USD), where she also is the main favourite, and is going to play directly in the eight-finals against the winner between Karolina Pliskova (the Czech Republic) and a player from qualifications.AGERPRES

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