Balkaninsight.com

Muslim women who wear the face-covering niqab say they are often insulted or mocked on the streets of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but are determined to show they are following religious rules.

Unconfirmed reports say Serbia's new honorary consul in St Petersburg will be Gennady Timchenko, a Russian businessman with close links to Vladimir Putin's administration.

Owing to a bureaucratic bungle, drivers from Kosovo can now only obtain vehicle license plates made of paper, which only Albania will accept - although Wednesday's agreement with Serbia on reciprocal use of licence plates should improve matters.

Macedonia's Special Prosecution, SJO, tasked with investigating high-level crime, on Thursday raised its first indictments, in two cases related to last year's wiretap scandal.

The chief prosecutor at the new special court set up to try former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters for crimes during and after the war promised he would conduct his investigations fearlessly and independently.

Wartime Serb paramilitary commander Dragan Vasiljkovic, known as ‘Captain Dragan’, sent a complaint to the UN claiming he was illegally detained in Australia for years and unlawfully extradited to Croatia.

Eight refugees from the Middle East are suing Macedonia in the European Court of Human Rights, saying it violated their human rights by forcing them back to Greece.

The Hague Tribunal refused to consider a motion filed by former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic’s defence asking for the trial to be stopped because the court was systematically biased.

As Macedonia’s Special Prosecution, SJO, prepares to submit its second half-yearly report on Thursday, experts expect the first indictments against senior officials to be raised very soon.

Judges at the UN court said that Belgrade is refusing to fulfil its obligations and transfer three members of Vojislav Seselj’s Serbian Radical Party for trial on witness intimidation charges.

After Croatia's Social Democratic Party, SDP, suffered an embarrassing defeat in the country's recent elections, a similar fate awaits Bosnia's civic parties in the upcoming local elections there.

The chief Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Efraim Zuroff, told BIRN that the next Croatian government must confront politicians who try to rehabilitate the country’s World War II fascist regime.

Rappers on both sides of the Kosovo-Albania border are involved in increasingly bitter feuds that some in the media are likening to the 'wars' between hip-hop fans in the US in the 1990s.

The ongoing privatisation of media organisations in Serbia has forced many local, independent outlets to close - or become the tools of political parties.

Despite the leader's claims to have moved the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, to the centre ground, a few far-right candidates have still entered the new parliament under its auspices.

Members of the ruling Progressive Party and the nationalist Serbian Radical Party teamed up to accuse Ombudsman Sasa Jankovic of using his position to advance his political ambitions in the parliamentary debate on his annual report.

The decision of the European Commission President not to mention EU enlargement in his annual speech has left Balkan observers feeling concerned and disappointed.

A proposal for Montenegro to join NATO is likely to sail through the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, after President Barack Obama backed it strongly. 

As the ground continues to shake in Skopje, after Sunday’s magnitude 5.3 earthquake, many residents remain frightened of sleeping at home while others are keeping their children out of school.

Croatian and Bosnian officials will meet to discuss the construction of a long-delayed new bridge linking the two countries which is important for the development of Bosnia's Serb-dominated entity Republika Srpska.