US Justice Department

The Special Prosecution Against Organised Crime and Corruption said on Tuesday that two investigations of President Ilir Meta have begun after former MP Halit Valteri issued two criminal complaints accusing him of abuses related to lobbying contracts with US firms.

Kosovo-born New Yorker Mirsad Kandic, 40, faces up to life imprisonment for becoming an ISIS fighter, recruiting other ISIS fighters, and providing weapons, equipment, and battlefield intelligence to ISIS, the US Justice Department announced on Wednesday.

The new round of US sanctions on the war in Ukraine is targeting a major Russian commercial bank and a "global network" of more than 40 individuals and entities.

According to the announcement of the US Treasury Department, the specific network was under the leadership of the Russian oligarch, Konstantin Malofeev, whose activities had extended to Greece.

Montenegrin police officer on patrol in the capital Podgorica. Photo. BIRN/Samir Kajosevic

The US Justice Department said that Richard Ayvazyan, his wife, Marietta Terabelian, and his sister-in-law, Tamara Dadyan, were in detention in Montenegro. The Montenegrin Interior Ministry didn't respond to BIRN's request for arrest details by time of publication.

Freedom House is not the only watchdog to draw attention to democratic backsliding in Serbia since the Progressive Party of President Aleksandar Vucic took power in 2012.

But the official downgrade and the accusation that the Progressives have "systematically curtailed" the ability of the opposition to play a part in the business of governing struck a nerve.

Nothing symbolizes cryptocurrency's troubles with regulators as well as the travails of Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by volume. This past weekend alone, it ran into obstacles in Japan, the UK, and the Canadian province of Ontario.

Security has been tightened at the US Capitol in Washington in response to "a possible plot to breach" the building.

The move was prompted by intelligence that a militia group planned the attack for 4 March - the day conspiracy theorist group QAnon believes Donald Trump will return for a second term.

One Russian and three Bulgarian citizens face criminal charges in the United States for illegal export of strategic technologies to Russia, the US Justice Department reported. The names of the Bulgarians are Dimitar Dimitrov, Milan Dimitrov and Mariana Gargova, and the Russian is Ilias Sabirov, TASS reported.

Fifteen defendants including several Romanians have pleaded guilty before a US judge of involvement in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud US citizens through online auctions of non-existing goods, a US Justice Department statement issued on Monday by the US embassy in Bucharest said.

A man from Arkansas tried to blow up a car near the Pentagon building. He was arrested, the US Justice Department said.