The violence in Kosovo’s Serb-populated north earlier this month was not explicitly political but linked to crime, said the chief of the European Union’s police and justice mission in Kosovo. Most of the120,000 Serbs who live in Kosovo among two million Albanians reject the territory’s declaration of independence from Serbia. …

The 2008 Freedom House report classifies newly-independent Kosovo as a “not free” country, while Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro as well as European Union-candidate Macedonia are only “partly free”. Freedom House is a United States-based international NGO that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights. Its annual survey …

Serbia said it will import gas from Hungary and Germany until Jan 20, and hopes to raise the amount by 2 million cubic metres to cover its needs until the row between Russia and Ukraine is resolved. The country’s energy ministry said Serbia had sufficient crude oil to keep the …