Balkaninsight.com

While Balkan countries have curbed the flow of fighters to foreign wars, the online space is still a haven for Islamist extremists who remain out of reach there, recruiting and spreading messages of hate.

The government is considering reintroducing a short period of compulsory military service for Croatians at summer training camps, but the costs remain unknown.

The most controversial invitee to the Washington event is new Srebrenica mayor Mladen Grujicic, who has been criticised for saying the massacres of Bosniaks in 1995 did not amount to genocide.

A group of Serbs and Bosniaks in Montenegro is working on a declaration of reconciliation in a bid to overcome the disputes that have caused new tensions between the two ethnic groups.

An emergency decree approved by Romania’s Social Democratic government reducing the penalties for corruption sparked protests and prompted angry reactions from the president, opposition and magistrates.

A new report from watchdog Freedom House warned that deterioration in the rule of law, rising nationalism and continued corruption is worsening the democratic outlook in some Balkan countries.

A medical report rejected former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic’s claims that there were abnormally high levels of cancer among war crimes defendants held at the UN court’s detention centre.

In a letter to US President Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed ‘international king of the Roma’, Dorin Cioba, suggested that Roma workers could build the controversial wall on the Mexican border. 

With Theo Ushev’s ‘Blind Vaysha’ nominated for the 2017 Oscars and other Bulgarian short films shortlisted for prestigious festivals, there are hopes for a renewal of the ‘golden age’ of animation in the country.

Croatia’s announcement that industrial production grew by a staggering 14.9 per cent year-on-year - the biggest rise in 16 years - drew conflicting assessments from economic analysts.

The director of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, Anita Mitic, accused the Serbian state of being complicit in the series of recent attacks on the rights organisation.

Bosnian police agencies are running checks on the background of several men who were arrested last week in Austria in a large-scale anti-terrorism operation.

Mayors from the Democratic Union for Integration said they suspected an increase in official inspections of municipality buildings was retaliation for their party’s refusal to join a new governing coalition with Nikola Gruevski’s VMRO DPMNE.

Belgrade’s Humanitarian Law Centre claimed that 110 people, including senior Serbian officials, remain unprosecuted for removing hundreds of corpses in a bid to cover up massacres during the Kosovo war.

Differences within the Democratic Union for Integration party over the morality of yet another alliance with embattled Macedonian ex-PM Nikola Gruevski prevented his VMRO DPMNE from forming a new government.

Tomislav Nikolic said he expects 100 per cent support from the ruling Serbian Progressive Party to run for the presidency again this year and win re-election.

The first joint delegation by trade officials from Bosnia and Serbia to visit Saudi Arabia aims to create a united front for the two Balkan states when it comes to boosting arms exports, analysts say. 

Kosovo's government has yet to clarify its likely course towards the wall erected by the Serb authorities in the divided northern town of Mitrovica, despite a parliamentary resolution ordering its removal by the end of the month.

The growing popularity of the anti-establishment Living Wall suggests that Croatia is following a global trend in terms of the rise in populist politics, an expert has explained.

Growing cooperation between Bosnia’s Croat and Serb leaders is making many Bosniaks anxious – but whether this improbable alliance can survive in the long term is questionable.