Shpend Ahmeti

Prosecutors have launched an investigation into whether a photograph shown to media by Kosovo MP Flora Brovina on Thursday, which she said showed three Serbian soldiers raping an ethnic Albanian woman during the war, is authentic.

The president of the Kosovo Assembly said this at a joint press conference with representatives of the provisional Pristina institutions, Hashim Thaci, Ramush Haradinaj, and Shpend Ahmeti, one of the coordinators of the dialogue team.

The opposition Social Democratic Party, PSD, led by MPs who left the opposition Vetevendosje party in March, is getting closer to the ruling coalition, analysts say - driven by its criticism of the latter's approach to the EU-led talks with Serbia.

The Pristina municipality on Tuesday signed a cooperation memorandum with the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency, TIKA, to renovate the Elena Gjika elementary school, which was built at the beginning of the 20th century.

The renovation of the school, with its Austro-Hungarian architecture, will receive half of its funding from TIKA.

The Mayor of Pristina, Shpend Ahmeti, on Wednesday became the new leader of the Social Democratic Party, PSD, which he and a number of other MPs joined after leaving the main opposition Vetevendosje party.

Pristina's mayor Shpend Ahmeti resigned from the main Kosovo opposition party, Vetevendosje, late on Wednesday, several months after he won his second mandate as its mayoral candidate - highighting serious internal problems within the party.

Preliminary results from Kosovo's Central Election Commission, CEC, held good news for the opposition Vetevendosje party and the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK - and for the governing Alliance of the Future of Kosovo, AAK. It was bad night for the Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK.

Less than three weeks before polling day in the local elections in Kosovo on October 22, the race is hotting up in the capital, Pristina, where eight candidates are running for the position of mayor.

Voters say their expectations are linked more to basic needs that directly affect their daily lives than political party progammes.

In a bid to repeat the success it had in the June general elections, when it came in second place, Kosovo's opposition Vetevendosje movement has announced the names of its mayoral candidates for several towns in the October local elections.

Politico Europe's list of 28 personalities that are likely to shape, shake and stir Europe in 2017 features mayors, business people, activists and journalists at the expense of political bosses - and the selection from the six Balkan countries included in this year's list is no different.