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The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) completed the third review under a two-year Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) with Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) on a lapse-of-time basis.[1] The completion of the review enables the disbursement of an amount equivalent to SDR 33.82 million (about €38.9 million), which will bring total disbursements under the arrangement to SDR 169.1 million (about €194.4 million).The economy is showing tentative signs of recovery and modest growth of 0.5 percent continues to be projected for 2013. External and domestic risks to the growth outlook, however, while reduced, remain substantial.The SBA remains on track. All end-March 2013 performance criteria (PCs) were met, although data to assess the criterion on the non-accumulation of domestic arrears by the general governments of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska are not yet available, due to delays in reporting by lower levels of government. In light of this difficulty and the fact that there is no indication that this PC was not met, the Executive Board approved a waiver of applicability of this PC. Continued progress was also made in implementing structural reforms aimed at strengthening public financial management and tax administration, and safeguarding financial sector stability.The SBA with BiH was approved on September 26, 2012 (see Press Release No. 12/366) in an amount equivalent to SDR 338.2 million (about €388.9 million, or US$508.6 million).bne/IMF

The mobile market in Bosnia and Herzegovina has seen a number of significant developments in recent years that has increased competition and accelerated development of services in the country. Wireless data services are becoming more established, with operators extending investment outside their historical concession areas. Meanwhile, the introduction of mobile number portability will put downward pressure on prices and should result in an increase in total subscriptions. Meanwhile, in the wireline market there has been some consolidation, creating converged service players that should challenge the incumbents. There is also the prospect of the privatisation of some of the state holdings in the sector, with reported interest from major telecoms groups in the region. These developments are ushering in a brighter era for the market, which in 2013 still remains a laggard in the region in terms of service penetration for mobile and broadband, with relatively high prices and little progress on VAS.Source: Fast Market Research

Bosnia’s biggest utility EPBiH has shortlisted Japan’s Hitachi, a Spanish-led group and a Chinese consortium to build a 450 MW coal-fired unit at its Tuzla plant. EPBiH chose the three bidders out of 11 international firms and consortia which had applied to build the unit at the Tuzla plant, at an estimated cost of around 1.65 billion Bosnian marka ($1.1 billion), an EPBiH spokeswoman said. The project will be one of the largest investments in the Balkan country’s ageing energy infrastructure, where outdated coal-fired plants face rising consumption, Hurriyet Daily news.

Tahrir Square, Taksim Square, and now, Sarajevo's Bosnia-Herzegovina Square. Thousands of Bosnians formed a human chain there last week, refusing to let parliamentarians leave until they broke a stalemate that prevented vital identity documents from being issued. After years of unrelenting political deadlock, have Bosnia's long-ignored citizens finally awaken?The answer is at best, maybe. It remains to be seen whether upset over identity numbers, which are essential for birth certificates and passports, has touched a wellspring of suppressed anger as in Turkey and Egypt or is merely an episodic burst of desperation.Surely, popular anger will intensify as government inaction has now taken a tragic turn (the infant denied treatment in Germany because the parents could not obtain a passport has died.)On the other hand, defying international efforts to stimulate civil society, the Bosnian public Serbs, Croats, and Bosniak Muslims alike has mostly sat back and watched passively for nearly two decades as wartime-era politicians have squabbled while exploiting their positions for personal and party gain.Indeed, the elites in Bosnia are easily the least accountable in the Balkans, which is a notable achievement in a region with little tradition of actually seeking the views of voters. Bosnia's parties function as corporations without shareholders, divvying up their influence over an array of Socialist-era enterprises and public utilities while they squabble along ethnic lines.These parties exist for the revenue that they can absorb, maintaining their grip on power through a combination of patronage, manipulation of the media, and populist messages that still resonate strongly in deeply divided Bosnia. If ever a besotted country deserved the government that it has, it is Bosnia, which has continued election after election to fall for cheap nationalist theatrics and send the same parties, indeed the same leaders, back to office. If he could have visited Bosnia, Abraham Lincoln might well revise his maxim that "You can't fool all the people all the time."What's more, even if the identity number protests prove to be a true "Bosnian Awakening", such a movement cannot by itself bring about the change that Bosnia desperately needs. This is because the country remains in the grips of deep ethnic divisions, which the protests only threaten to aggravate.To recap, the mess over identity numbers is caused by the insistence of Serb representatives on a special prefix that will distinguish their entity, Republika Srpska, from the central state a variant of the core dispute that brought Bosnia into three-and-a half-years of war.Rather than consider modifying their position in the wake of public outrage, RS leaders have seized on the protests as evidence that Sarajevo is "unsafe" for Serbs, continuing the wartime and post-war narrative that a strong Bosnia threatens Serb interests.Sadly, despite the polarization that has been painfully obvious in Bosnia since the war ended in 1995, a seductive theory took hold among foreigners a decade ago that Bosnia's progress hinged on giving these same feuding, venal politicians "ownership" over their destiny, displacing the international supervisor who had prodded the parties into post-war state building.In 2006, the then High Representative, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, embraced the ownership theory and announced that he would no longer intervene to overcome intransigence by the country's politicians. This self-emasculation proved Bosnia's turning point. The country's progress in building effective, representative institutions precisely the kind necessary to join the EU immediately went into reverse in the face of unrelenting assault, chiefly from the RS leadership. The result has been economic decay and political stagnation, presided over by a crony, multi-ethnic political establishment.The downward spiral at the central level has cast its shadow over the unwieldy Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the entity that links divided Croats and Bosniaks, diminishing the incentive to pursue reform there as the country's central institutions continue to unravel. A recent, US-sponsored conference elicited valuable suggestions on reforming the Federation entity, but that there are no indications of serious commitment to realizing the reforms.Four years ago, Washington also tried its hand at sparking interest among Bosnia's Serb, Croat and Bosniak leaders in reforming critical flaws in the country's constitution, but that effort also went nowhere. Apart from these efforts and the occasional high level visit, international policy in Bosnia has mostly been on auto-pilot with Brussels relying on Bosnia's presumed interest in joining the EU as the mainstay of its policy, while American officials still exhort the country's politicians to mend their dilatory ways.The embarrassing standoff in front of the state parliament which trapped a group of visiting bankers considering investing in Bosnia should serve as a wake-up call. Policy makers must grasp that if the protests take hold, the result is not likely to be quiet reform, but heightened inter-ethnic tensions.This is because the protests are mostly a Bosniak affair. Bosnia's Croats and Serbs remain alienated physically and politically from the state capital, Sarajevo. At the same time, ignoring those Bosniak protestors risks an insidious form of alienation among Muslims, who may lose hope altogether in an EU future.Brussels must finally shelve the blithe notion that Bosnia can continue to drift while the EU dangles the remote carrot of eventual membership. Instead, as she has done so effectively in Kosovo, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton must become personally engaged.But Ashton will need a strategy to dismantle the sclerotic party and governing structure that maintains its stranglehold over Bosnia, perpetuating ethnic division. Instead of the cookie-cutter approach, Brussels must finally craft a stabilization and association plan for Bosnia that is grounded in reality.The country simply does not have and cannot produce on its own a fully functioning state and political system; and the existing Stabilization and Association policy, devised in Thessaloniki ten years ago, works only with countries that have such a system.Seizing on the shared interest of Bosnians in joining the EU, it is Brussels which must supply the critical incentive to reform, linking with absolute clarity and resolve Bosnia's internal political and administrative functionality with meaningful rewards on its EU prospects.bne/Transconflict

EU statistics agency says Bosnia and Herzegovina has the lowest GDP per capita of 37 European countries examined.Bosnia and Herzegovina has the lowest Gross Domestic Product, GDP, per capita and the lowest Actual Individual Consumption, AIC, of 37 European countries, according to a report by the EU statistics agency Eurostat.The research covered all EU member states, plus Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Montenegro, Bosnia and Albania.Based on preliminary results for 2012, Bosnia's GDP, expressed in Purchasing Power Standards, PPS, is only 27 per cent of the EU average, while Bosnia's AIC is 36 per cent of the average.At the end of last year, the official number of unemployed persons in Bosnia was 550,574, 44.4 per cent of the working-age population, the highest number ever recorded.A GDP that is 72 per cent lower than the EU average puts Bosnia last overall on the list, behind all other countries from the Western Balkans.Albania is not far behind Bosnia, with a GDP that is 30 per cent of the EU average, while Serbia and FYR Macedonia are both on 35 per cent and Montenegro is on 42 per cent.Croatia, which is going to become an EU member state on July 1, is the richest country in the region. Its GDP is 61 per cent of the EU average. This puts Croatia above two existing EU member states, Romania (59 per cent) and Bulgaria (47 per cent).Luxembourg has the highest GDP level among the EU member states at 271 per cent of the EU average. By Kenan Efendic, BIRN, Sarajevobne/BIRN

To mark International Anti-Corruption Day the United Nations is calling for people across the globe to join a worldwide campaign to raise awareness about what Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called a “corrosive” scourge, and encouraging people from all walks of life to take action against this crime.

Depuis le 2 décembre 2015, les équipages français ont réalisé 69 sorties aériennes au-dessus des zones contrôlées par Daech en Irak et en Syrie, dont 48 de bombardement sur des objectifs planifiés ou d’opportunité et 11 de recueil de renseignement.

Bank of Albania (BoA) Governor Ardian Fullani on Wednesday said the bank will keep its basic interest rate for Albanian Lek (ALL) unchanged at 3.75 percent, and reconfirmed the bank's previous economic projection for the country.Fullani said in a regular monthly press conference that the BoA decided to keep its projection for Albanian economic growth at the same level as in 2012. He added that annual inflation is expected to stand at 2.1 percent.The governor stressed that BoA once again pointed to importance of maintenance of fiscal equilibrium and control on deficit and public debt.bne/Xinhua

The election was always expected to be closely fought, and the results contested, as political patronage is huge in Albania - with the winners historically undertaking a wholesale clearance of civil servants/bureaucrats. Both parties are pro-EU, but a question will be how long instability lasts around any challenges to the election result and how much institutional memory can be retained with the change of government. I guess if these exit polls are confirmed, then the plus factor is that the scale of victory for the Socialists is sufficiently large so as to limit the Berisha administration's ability really to hold out against conceding defeat. For the aged Berisha this might mark his final bow from politics, as it is unclear whether he would want a long stint now in the opposition.bne/Standard Bank

The Central Electoral Commission, CEC, has abandoned the planned use of new pilot technologies in the June 23 parliamentary elections, after tests revealed problems.The Electoral Code mandated the CEC to pilot two new election technologies for these elections: an electronic voter verification system, EVS, in the district of Tirana, and an electronic counting system in the region of Fier.But according to a CEC report 11 per cent of the identity cards tested could not be read from the machine.Tests with the EVS system in Tirana revealed that the system could not read deteriorated IDs or prevent attempts of multiple voting at different voting centres.The ballot scanning system in the region of Fier will not be used either, after tests conducted in April revealed a number of problems with the system, including slow processing speed and insufficient capacity.The capacity of the selected ballot counting system is limited to 42 names while the final ballot lists 67 political parties.The e-voting system in both Fier and Tirana were contracted by the Spanish company Indra at a cost of €2.6 million.Albania has a long history of elections that do not meet international standards and end in political disputes. The June 23 vote is seen as a key test for the countrys already battered aspirations for EU membership.The June 23 parliamentary polls will face two major coalitions, one headed by the ruling centre-right Democratic Party of Prime Minister Bershia and the other by the Socialists of former Tirana mayor Edi Rama.Berisha is seeking a third mandate in power. He previously served as Albania's President from 1992-1997 and from 1991 has been the uncontested leader of the Democrats.Rama served as Tirana mayor from 2000 until 2011 and was elected chairman of the Socialist Party in 2005.By Besar Likmeta, BIRN, Tiranabne/BIRN

Statkraft has announced it will commence construction of the Devoll hydropower project in Albania. The company will begin with the Banjë and Moglicë hydropower plants with a combined capacity of 243 MW and an annual production of about 700 GWh.In total, the Devoll project will consist of three hydropower plants in the valley of Devoll, with an installed capacity of 278 MW. On average the power plants will produce about 800 GWh annually, increasing the Albanian electricity production by almost 20 percent. The investment decision for the third plant will be considered when the first two plants are completed.Earlier this year, Statkraft acquired EVN’s 50 percent share of Devoll Hydropower Sh.A. and is now 100 percent owner of the company and the construction project. The change in ownership is approved by Albanian authorities. The concession agreement gives Devoll Hydropower the right to build, own and operate the power plants until they are transferred back to Albanian authorities at the end of the concession period.The investment frame for the first two plants is estimated to EUR 535 million. The tendering process for the main contracts is in its final stage and main construction works are planned to start in October. The plants are expected to be completed in 2016 and 2018, respectively.“The Devoll project is an important part of Statkraft’s investments in international hydropower, based on our hydropower expertise. This construction project secures both renewable energy and development in Albania, and underpins our position as Europe’s largest producer of renewable energy,” said Øistein Andresen, Statkraft Executive Vice President International Hydropower.   Source: Statkraft

Albania's Council of Ministers approved in principle the decision to increase salaries and pensions, and other decisionsThe meeting of the Council of Ministers examined and approved in principle the decision to increase salaries and pensions, in accordance with the legal definition of the state budget, a decision which will enter into force after the elections.The Albanian Prime Minister stressed that the increase  of salaries and pensions and remains a constant policy   of the government and that it will continue so in the future.Premier Berisha also suggested, the decision to adopt a much financial compensation for 1040 and persecuted, to the extent measure around 45 million dollars, as well as other decisions on expropriation, granting the concession, etc.. Government

A menekültek és a bevándorlók alapvető emberi jogainak tiszteletben tartására és a nemzetközi kötelezettségvállalásaik betartására intette Európa országait az emberi jogok világnapját megelőzően Strasbourgban kiadott nyilatkozatában az ENSZ Menekültügyi Főbiztossága és az Európa Tanács. A közös nyilatkozat arra kéri a kormányokat, a civil szervezeteket és a média képviselőit, hogy szálljanak A cikk folytatása …

Tovább….: http://pannonrtv.com/web2/?p=243571

      

LONDON - Wer hat das sagenumwobene Monument in Grossbritannien erbaut? Wofür wurden die Steine überhaupt aufgestellt? Wissenschaftler sind der Lösung des Stonehenge-Rätsels einen Schritt nähergekommen.

Das 11'000 Jahre alte Bauwerk ist weltberühmt. Stonehenge liegt in der Nähe der britischen Stadt Salisbury und ist eine der wichtigsten touristischen Sehenswürdigkeiten der Insel.

Das Monument besteht aus zweierlei Material. Der grössere, äussere Kreis besteht aus lokalem Sandstein. Der innere Kreis ist aus den sogenannten Blausteinen geformt. Woher kommen diese Brocken? Wie wurden sie hergebracht?

Um Stonehenge ranken sich unzählige Sagen. Forscher um Mike Parker Pearson vom University College London (UCL) haben das Rätsel nun ein Stück weit gelöst: Die Wissenschaftler glauben die Herkunft der Blausteine gefunden zu haben.

Erste Vermutungen legen nahe, dass die Steine 140 Kilometer entfernt in Wales aus dem Berg geschlagen wurden. In den Preseli-Bergen im Pembrokeshire Coast National Park fanden die Wissenschaftler eine Lücke in einem Steinbruch, die genau der Form eines der Blausteine entspricht.

Doch wie kamen die tonnenschweren Monolithen dahin, wo sie heute sind?

«Wir glauben, sie wurden auf hölzerne Schlitten gelegt und auf schienenähnlichen Baumstämmen gezogen», sagt Wissenschaftler Pearson. Seiner Meinung nach standen die Blausteine zuerst als Monument in den Preseli-Bergen und wurden erst nach 500 Jahren für den Bau von Stonehenge verwendet. (noo)

December 15-én mutatja be új közös darabját a Kosztolányi Dezső Színház Társulata és a Újvidéki Színház. A cikk folytatása …

Tovább….: http://www.vajma.info/cikk/kultura/10748/Kulonleges-bemutatora-keszul-a-Kosztolanyi-Dezso-Szinhaz.html

      

Az Egyesült Államok kész segíteni az Iszlám Állam ellen Ramádinál harcoló iraki csapatokat harci helikopterekkel és katonai tanácsadókkal is, amennyiben az szükségessé válik, és Bagdad kéri – mondta Ash Carter amerikai védelmi miniszter szerdai szenátusi meghallgatásán, Washingtonban.

A cikk folytatása …

Tovább….: http://www.magyarszo.com/hu/2914/kulfold_nagyvilag/137188/Az-USA–harci-helikoptereket-k%C3%BCldene-Irakba.htm

      

A közszolgálati média lényeges eleme minden demokratikus társadalomnak és fontos szerepet játszik az oktatásban, illetve a tájékoztatásban, hangzott el ma Belgrádban „A médiaszolgáltatások szerepe és kihívásai ma Európában” nevű konferencián. A találkozón a szerbiai és európai közszolgálati médiumok jövőbeli feladatairól és fejlődéséről tanácskoztak a résztvevők. Hogyan és miként kell lépést A cikk folytatása …

Tovább….: http://pannonrtv.com/web2/?p=243569

      

L'éditorial de Jean Paul Piérot : " Dans ce paysage dévasté, qu’il faudra reconstruire sur des bases plus solides, les progressistes, les femmes et les hommes de gauche communistes, socialistes, écologistes doivent parer à l’urgence et préserver la France d’autres matins bruns. Cela passe par la dénonciation, preuves à l’appui, et celles-ci ne manquent pas, de la diabolique imposture d’un parti qui se prétend défenseur du peuple, alors qu’il s’acharne à le diviser"

Németországban külön igazolványt kapnak a menedékkérők, és összekapcsolják a menekültügyben érintett hatóságok adatbázisait a kormány szerdai ülésén elfogadott törvénytervezet szerint, amelyet várhatóan már januárban megszavaz a törvényhozás.

A kormány a költségvetés minden egyes dinárjával el tud számolni – nyilatkozta Aleksandar Vučić. A szerb kormányfő leszögezte, ez az elmúlt 43 év legstabilabb szerbiai büdzséje. A költségvetési politika, pedig védeni fogja az ország pénzügyi és gazdasági stabilitását – tette hozzá a miniszterelnök a parlamenti vitában. Vučić úgy véli, hogy A cikk folytatása …

Tovább….: http://pannonrtv.com/web2/?p=243566