News archive of February 2020

A court has handed three-and-a-half year prison sentences to 17 of the 66 migrants arrested from Friday to 6 a.m. Saturday for illegally entering Greece.

Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias was busy Saturday contacting his counterparts in several European countries, as well  as the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Josep Borrell Fontelles, whom he asked to convene an extraordinary meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council.

The Serbian Assembly on Saturday adopted a new law boosting the rights of military invalids and giving some new rights to war veterans from the 1990s wars and World War II, although it failed to extend benefits to victims of conflicts outside Serbian territory.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in Istanbul on Saturday that 18,000 migrants had crossed the border, without providing evidence, adding that the number could rise to 25,000-30,000 on Saturday.

Deaths in Iran from coronavirus have hit 43, the highest number outside China, and the total number of infected people has risen to 593, an Iranian health official said on Feb. 29.

As several countries in the Middle East reported cases of the coronavirus stemming from Iran, the country is at the epicenter of the outbreak in the region.

The coronavirus outbreak, with four confirmed cases so far in Greece, has caused the postponement of the 5th Delphi Economic Forum.

The Forum, scheduled for March 5-8, will now take place at the end of May or the beginnning of June, according to the Forum organizers.

Here's the announcement in full:

The Turkish deputy foreign minister briefed the top U.S. diplomat in the country on developments in the wake of Feb. 27's attack on Turkish troops by regime forces in Idlib, northwestern Syria.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Önal met U.S. Ambassador to Turkey David Satterfield in Ankara on Friday, according to diplomatic sources.

More than 4,000 migrants have been prevented from crossing into Greece from Turkey and there have been 66 arrests, Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas said Saturday.

"Greece was the target of an organized. mass, illegal attempt to violate its borders and has withstood it," Petsas told reprters after an emergency meeting of ministers at the Prime Minister's office.

The U.N. envoy for Libya on Feb. 28 denounced the near breakdown of a fragile truce between the country's warring sides, citing a "serious violation" over the last 24 hours attacks on the capital including an early morning shelling of Tripoli's airport.

Turkey on Feb. 29 welcomed the U.K. move to include the two aliases of the PKK terror group in the list of terrorist organizations.