Public sphere

Train and island ferry services in Greece were suspended Wednesday and most Athens public transport was idle as the country's biggest labor union held a strike against persisting austerity measures. The transport shutdown prompted Athenians to drive to work, causing major traffic jams in the capital whose center was shut down ahead of planned protest marches.

There will be no trolley bus service on Wednesday, November 28, as drivers on Thursday announced their intention to walk off the job, joining a 24-hour anti-austerity strike called by the country's private sector union, GSEE.

City bus workers will also join the action in the early morning and late at night, meaning that services will run from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on that day.

Only 1% of Bulgarians find the media in Bulgaria to be completely independent, and 63% of our compatriots consider the media to be dependent in some way, it became clear during a forum "Media and Politics in Bulgaria", organized by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

A three-day protest under the title "Occupation" with demands for resignation of the government started at 11:00 on 16th of November outside the building of Parliament, reports BNT. 

The protest is organised in the social media networks and is declared as dissatisfaction of Bulgarians in the country and abroad. The protest will continue in the next two days.

The Greek Foreign Ministry on Sunday condemned a deadly attack on a synagogue in the US city of Pittsburgh on Saturday.

In a Tweet, the Foreign Ministry said it was "shocked" by the killing of 11 people by a lone gunman who stormed the Tree of Life synagogue during prayers.

The businessman Nikolai Banev and his wife Evgenia were detained in France with a European arrest warrant. This is another business family against which a large-scale investigation is being conducted, reports BNT. 

Ministers of social policy, health and education, lawmakers, trade union representatives, the national ombudsperson and protesting mothers of disabled children held at a joint meeting in Parliament on 4th of October and discussed the speeding up of legislation on social issues, reports BNT. 

Police officers shouted slogans during an anti-austerity rally by members of the force in front of the White Tower in Thessaloniki on Friday - a day before the opening of the annual Thessaloniki International Fair by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

The demonstration was attended by police, firefighters and port authority officials from all over Greece.

He stressed that "to resolve any bilateral conflict, but also that every solution must contribute to the wider stability of this region, so that this bilateral solution does not go at the expense of others in the region."

"Now we must to see the bigger picture which means that matter what the solution is, it must be such that it does not go to the detriment of others," Hahn said.

At least 35 people were killed in Genoa on Tuesday when a part of the Morandi Bridge, a highway viaduct, collapsed.