News archive of August 2016

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi may not attend the SAARC Summit to be held on November 9-10 in Islamabad. Although Pakistan has invited PM Modi to attend the summit, India is yet to confirm whether the PM will travel to Islamabad for the regional meet.

The selection panel of the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize, comprising independent figures from the world of human rights and chaired by the president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Pedro Agramunt, said on Tuesday that BIRN's regional director Gordana Igric was among the three candidates for the award this year.

Police on Tuesday arrested Vetevendosje members Atdhe Arifi, Astrit Dehari, Adea Batusha, Egzon Haliti, Petrit Ademi and Frasher Krasniqi, a spokesperson for the party, on suspicion of involvement in the attack on August 4.

Weapons were found at locations where the suspects were apprehended during a joint operation with Kosovo's Special Prosecution, police said.

Former Air Force Commander Maj Gen Rumen Radev is to be registered as the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP)'s contender in the November 06 presidential elections, party leader Korneliya Ninova has said.

Radev's candidacy has been endorsed through a so-called "initiative committee," Ninova has told the media after a vote held at the BSP National Council.

A stronger migratory pressure can now be felt on the EU's external borders, the head of the common border protection agency has said.

The march of "more migrants" en route to Bulgaria from Greece or Turkey has been singled out as an issue, but the numbers are small compared to those in the Western Balkan countries last summer, he has added.

The Good Music in Town series, organized by IEG Live, will continue with the chilling story of Baroque genius Antonio Vivaldi, "Vivaldianno City of Mirrors," staged on Nov. 5 at Istanbul's Ülker Sports Arena and the musical theater show "Belcanto the Luciano Pavarotti Heritage" on Dec. 17 and 18 at the city's Volkswagen Arena. 

To mark the International Day of the Disappeared on Tuesday, Serbian officials and missing persons associations told a press conference in Belgrade that finding the 10,653 people who disappeared during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s remains a critical priority.

NEW YORK - A third round of an informal vote to select the new UN secretary-general ended in the UN SC Monday. According to unofficial sources, former Portuguese PM Antonio Guterres received 11 "encourage", three "discourage" and one "no opinion" vote, followed by Slovak FM Miroslav Lajcak with nine "encourage", five "discourage" and one "no opinion" vote.

BELGRADE - The ICTY Office of the Prosecutor on Tuesday appealed a judgment acquitting Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj of all charges of war crimes committed during the armed conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and persecution of ethnic Croats from Serbia's Vojvodina province.

Businessman Spas Rusev has been officially announced as the new owner of Levski PFC, one of Bulgaria's key football teams.

Rusev, 62, has received voluntarily all shares of the trio that ran the club over the past year.

This has been the second transfer of ownership in a bit more than a year after June 2015.