News archive of September 2015

NATO is not the one to decide on the structure, mandate and mission of the Kosovo Security Force (KSF), an unnamed NATO source has been quoted by a daily.

"The future of the KSF is an internal matter of the local Kosovo institutions," the Belgrade-based newspaper Danas said it learned "unofficially" from the western military alliance.

One Syrian migrant has died and five others are reported missing after an inflatable boat carrying migrants capsized off Turkey's northwestern coast late on Sept. 29.

The body of the dead migrant was found in a coastguard search after the Greece-bound inflatable migrant boat carrying Syrians capsized off Enez, a district in the northwestern province of Edirne.

The cabinet approved on Wednesday a draft document to upgrade the Bulgarian Armed Forces' capabilities.

A statement by the government reads that the so-called Program for Development of Defense Capabilities of the Bulgarian Armed Forces 2020 will be submitted to Parliament for consideration.

Slovakia  will recourse to the European Court of Justice against the decision by the European Commission to enforce a mandatory refugee relocation scheme to other EU member-states of the 120,000 migrants currently in Greece and Italy. The government of Slovakia announced it would take the matter to the European Court, Tuesday.

Serbian FMs Ivica Dacic has conferred in New York with his counterparts from Turkey and Bosnia-Herzegovina Feridun Hadi Sinirlioglu and Igor Crnadak.

The ministers welcomed on Tuesday the first meeting of the Trilateral Trade Committee of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Turkey held in Ankara on August 17-18 and the forthcoming trilateral business forum in Sarajevo on October 20.

Bulgaria will transfer some BGN 0.1133 M (nearly EUR 0.058 M) in humanitarian aid to Hungary as the country is still struggling to deal with thousands of migrants from the Middle East willing to reach Germany.

The Bulgarian mountaineer Boyan Petrov became on Wednesday the first Bulgarian to have ascended the eighth highest peak in the world - Manaslu in the Himalayas.

The information was announced by the website of the expedition - Seven Summit Treks Manaslu and has not yet been confirmed by Petrov himself, which will be possible only after he reaches the base camp.

Scott Kelly, the US astronaut who posted twice on Greece on his twitter account ex-pressing his support and love to the Greek people, is in his sixth month on the Space Station and continues to snap photos from space. Here is a collection of some his best photos.

Greek unemployment rate rose to 25.2% of the workforce in June, from 25 % in May, according to a report published by Eurostat.

Based on that report, the number of unemployed people in the EU totaled 23 million and in the Eurozone 17.6 million in August. Greece and Spain recorded the highest unemployment rates in the EU with 25.2% and 22.2% respectively.

Turkey has declined six places to 51st out of 140 economies in this year's World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitiveness Index, mainly due to the deterioration in the country's institutional structure and rising political uncertainties holding back private investments.