Balkan News

The US government banned Goran Radosavljevic, a former police chief and Serbian ruling Progressive Party official, from entering the country because of his alleged involvement in human rights violations in the Kosovo war.

Viktor Kiss, a sculptor and Burning Man enthusiast, has created an unusual artistic community and a festival in an abandoned brick factory in the Serbian capital.

Governments may be looking the other way, but rising carbon prices and stricter EU regulations are sounding the death knell for the region’s lignite fired power plants.

Reports of possible US deployment in an area of recent conflict between Russia and Ukraine are alarming countries in the region, which mostly don’t want to get involved.  

The German Federal Foreign Office told BIRN it is boosting efforts to control the illegal trade in small arms from Western Balkan countries because the weapons are being used by terrorists and criminals in Europe.

The majority in the Macedonian parliament passed a much-disputed Amnesty Law that will legally absolve some of the participants in last year’s mob attack on the legislature.

A controversial decision to fix a dysfunctional election law can enable the formation of a new government and prevent looming financial collapse in the country’s Federation entity, but Bosniak parties will appeal against it.

None of the suspects arrested over the murder of Kosovo Serb politician Oliver Ivanovic is believed to be the person who shot him, although they are thought to have aided the murder, claims a prosecution document seen by BIRN.

At a UN Security Council session called by Belgrade, Kosovo’s president defended Pristina’s decision to transform its security force into an army, while his Serbian counterpart claimed it will jeopardise peace.

Two proposals to ‘discipline’ online media in Albania were criticized on Monday as potentially anti-constitutional and as likely to have a chilling effect on freedom of expression.

Once a glittering haunt for Yugoslavia’s pre-war elites, the Hotel Bristol has fallen on hard times, becoming home to displaced families who now face eviction – while mystery lingers over the building’s fate.

Washington has called for the shutdown of the downscaled United Nations peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, arguing that its work is done - but Serbia and its allies insist it must stay.

 ‘Winter is coming’, the famous phrase from the hit series ‘Game of Thrones’, causes trepidation across the Balkans – not because of ice zombies but because of the high pollution levels almost suffocating the region’s cities.

Romania has the worst record for unfair trials in the European Union. With the justice system mired in controversy, ordinary victims of judicial errors face an uphill struggle.

The leaders of Macedonia and Greece, Zoran Zaev and Alexis Tsipras, are to be nominated for a Nobel peace prize for their efforts to achieve a historic agreement between their countries.

The trial of former Bosnian Serb Army officer Dane Lukajic, accused of involvement in violence against prisoners of war detained at the Manjaca camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, opened in Zagreb.

Thousands of Roma people were detained in camps and killed in Nazi-occupied Serbia during World War II alongside the country’s Jews, but little has been done to commemorate their suffering or preserve their memory.

The Serbian Orthodox Church, which wields considerable influence in the Balkan state, has long been accused of covering up sexual abuse within its ranks.

Descendants of fighters allied with the Nazis and the collaborationist World War II regime in Serbia have been asking for the restitution of property confiscated after the war, the national restitution agency said.

Kosovo’s government is in fighting mood, taxing Serbian goods and vowing to form its own ‘army’ – but it is going for the wrong targets.