Balkaninsight.com

Former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski may avoid his two-year jail sentence for the illicit secret purchase of a Mercedes if Macedonia's Appeals Court fails to confirm the verdict by the end of October.

People marched through the main square of Kosovo’s capital Pristina on the International Day of the Disappeared to commemorate the people who are still missing from the 1998-99 war.

President Hashim Thaci said he will bring the idea of a ‘border correction’ with Serbia to the negotiating table in Brussels as part of a potential final deal with Belgrade, amid rising opposition to any territorial exchange.

Bosnia’s Institute for Missing Persons is excavating the site of a suspected mass grave containing 29 Bosniak women and children killed in the village of Zecovi in the Prijedor area in July 1992.

Albanian human rights associations and politicians have united in condemnation of the unidentified persons who sprayed bullets against the home of the father of crime reporter Klodiana Lala.

After a leaked taped conversation was published, apparently showing an Albanian official trying to influence a European Court of Human Rights judge, the court has called it 'inappropriate' – but insisted it did not change the court's decision.

Jovan Tintor, a former adviser to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, was convicted of being responsible for the unlawful detentions and abuse of Bosniak and Croat prisoners in the Vogosca area in 1992.

After a European Parliamentary Committee, LIBE, voted on Thursday in favour of visa liberalisation for Kosovo, its leaders greeted the development as a welcome step towards ending the current barriers on free movement.

The local assembly in Serbia’s second city, Novi Sad, has been accused of distorting history for voting to erect a monument to the alleged victims of crimes by Yugoslav Communist Partisan forces.

Albanian President Ilir Meta has appealed to Albanians in Macedonia to vote for the historic 'name' deal between Macedonia and Greece.

The government in Podgorica says it is still considering an Italian request for Montenegro to take in some of the migrants stuck in an Adriatic port in Sicily.

Kosovo's integration minister has sounded optimistic ahead of an important vote on Thursday by the European Parliament's Committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, LIBE, on visa liberalisation.

The US Air Force is to spend 40 million dollars on modernizing a base in central Transylvania, Romania, in order to further deter Russian ambitions in the region. 

Serbian law experts say that any final deal with Kosovo, changing the country’s borders, will affect the constitution and must therefore go to a referendum.

With heavy fines and seizures of merchandise, Tirana’s municipal police are driving out the vendors, who used to make a living by selling their wares on the streets of Albania’s capital.

To mark International Day of the Disappeared, relatives of people who went missing in Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo and Albania during the 1990s wars or under Communism describe the agony of waiting decades to discover their loved ones’ fate.

The assembly in the northern Serb-run side of the Kosovo town of Mitrovica has named a street after the murdered politician Oliver Ivanovic – angering Ivanovic’s party, which said it had another street in mind.

Three former High Representatives for Bosnia and Herzegovina in an open letter to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini have urged EU member states not to agree to any plans for swapping territory between Serbia and Kosovo.

The recent case of a journalist assaulted in Bosnia has drawn sharp reactions – and accusations that the Bosnian Serb president has created a climate of hostility to the media.

Eight media-related NGOs in Moldova have accused the police of deliberately preventing their work in reporting on the public protests earlier this week – in what they call a new blow press freedom.