Balkans

An amendment to the law on intercepting telecommunications will expand government agencies’ powers to monitor communications to include Internet activity.The bill presented to Wednesday’s cabinet by Prime Minister Sali Berisha gives intelligence and law enforcement agencies broad powers to work with private companies to share information on Internet users.

Bosnia Presidency member Bakir Izetbegovic tells UN General Assembly that international inaction over Syria has increased the danger of Srebrenica-style carnage.Izetbegovic, Bosniak [Muslim] member of the country’s tripartite presidency, told the UN General Assembly that the international community “failed” to handle the crisis in eastern Bosnia in July 1995 – …

Six years since the adoption of a Public Information Access Law, Macedonians still have trouble obtaining official information, the Foundation Open Society – Macedonia says.Macedonia’s information law is good in theory, but poor implementation means it is of little practical use, Open Society Macedonia said in its latest analysis. Its …

About 3.5 million people – roughly half the population of Serbia – are now on the social networking site Facebook, a recent survey shows.Half of Serbia’s roughly 7 million people now have an account on the social networking site Facebook, recent data show. Facebook users in the country also represent …

The IMF has approved a two-year stand-by arrangement of 405.3 million euro for the country – but it won’t get all the money at once.The IMF loan, approved on September 26, is designed to support Bosnia’s economic programme for the next two years, ease the effects of the “external environment …

MPs who also own TV and radio stations have until the end of the month to choose between keeping their political careers or their media outlets.Boris Stojmenov, MP and head of the small VMRO-Macedonian party, which is part of Nikola Gruevski’s government, has until September 30 to decide whether to …

The Serbian war veteran association has canceled its “Shame Parade“, saying they do not want to be manipluated by the politicans.When Serbia’s LGBT community announced that it would hold its annual ‘Pride Parade’ on October 6, the Serbian war veterans said that they wanted to take advantage of the media …

More than 700 EU backed cross-regional projects aimed at helping reconciliation and improving the economy have been conducted in Serbia and neighbouring countries.Serbia is currently cooperating with seven neighbouring countries – Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Croatia- on various issues including ecology, education and agriculture.

Montenegro can continue to count on NATO’s backing, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Foreign Minister Nebojsa Kaludjerovic in New York.Meeting on the sidelines of the 67th United Nations General Assembly in New York, Montenegrin Foreign Minister Kaludjerovic informed Rasmussen of Montenegro’s progress as part of the Membership Action Plan, …

The government appears to have backed away from its earlier pledge to scrap a mass of costly government agencies, with only seven out of 130 earmarked for abolition.Serbia’s new government has backtracked on pledges to scrap costly state agencies that are widely seen as bodies for employing the friends and …