Romania's prime minister designate Mihai Razvan Ungureanu on Tuesday started talks on forming a new government.

Ungureanu arrived shortly after 07:00 GMT at the government offices where the ruling coalition parties will discuss the new team.

Romania's justice minister Catalin Predoiu has been named interim prime minister Monday following the resignation of Emil Boc's center-right government, the president's office said.

"President Traian Basescu has taken note of Prime Minister Emil Boc's resignation and named Catalin Predoiu as interim prime minister," it said.

Energy giants ExxonMobil and OMV Petrom said Saturday they have found gas deposits in the Romanian part of the Black Sea continental shelf, a month after they began explorations in the area.

"The first deepwater well drilled by ExxonMobil and OMV Petrom indicates the presence of natural gas," the two companies said in a press release.

Romanian President Traian Basescu on Friday stressed the importance for his country to recognize its role in the Holocaust, on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

"Acknowledging the tragedy of the Holocaust which made millions of victims among Jews throughout the world and the tragic events for the Jewish community in Romania represents an essential element for the evolution and the maturity of a democratic nation", he said.

Underfunded and short-staffed, Romania's health system is in need of intensive care, analysts say, warning that recent mass street protests should not derail a drive for reform.

Hundreds of Romanians rallied in Bucharest on Saturday to protest against austerity measures and a planned health care reform, calling on President Traian Basescu to quit.

Chanting "Resignation" and "Fear Not, Basescu Will Be Toppled," the protesters marched towards the presidential palace, closely monitored by some 150 police.

The CIA used a clandestine detention center in Bucharest to interrogate al-Qaida suspects, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, according to an investigation revealed by German media Thursday.

The prison, used between 2003 and 2006, was in the cellar of a government building in a northwestern residential neighborhood of the Romanian capital, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and ARD public television said.

A controversial European Union bid to impose a tax on financial transactions is intended to make the finance sector pay something back after massive public sector bailouts in recent years.

Draft European Commission legislation endeavors to prevent companies from relocating outside the single market, as critics claim, or consumers from picking up the tab further down the line, as campaigners fear.

The Council of Europe's human rights chief urged Poland, Romania and Lithuania Monday to lift the lid on CIA "black sites" where detainees were allegedly tortured on their soil.

The Central Intelligence Agency, as part of its clandestine counter-terrorism operations, set up "black sites" in at least seven overseas locations, including some in Europe, Thomas Hammarberg, the council's human rights commissioner, wrote on his blog.

Survivors and descendants of Jews killed during the Iasi pogrom in Romania on Tuesday attended ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of one of the worst single Holocaust massacres.

"We are here today next to the Iasi Synagogue, the oldest in Romania. We are inaugurating an obelisk which is a monument to remember the thousands of Jews slaughtered here at the end of June 1941", the president of the Iasi Jewish community, Abraham Ghiltan, said.