GREECE The wildfires that ripped through the suburbs of Athens forcing residents to flee their homes are now under control. Thousands of hectares of virgin fir and prime forest have been destroyed and hundreds of houses burnt to the ground. The fire broke out last Friday in the village of …

RUSSIA A suicide bomber has killed himself and four police officers in Chechnya. Another has been seriously injured. The attack took place in the village of Mesker Yurt, 20 kilometres from the capital Grozny. Just hours before the Russian Prime minister Valdimir Putin had been in the region on a …

KOSOVO Demonstrators from the Vetevendosje self-determination movement have been arrested after overturning 25 EU rule of law mission, EULEX, cars in central Pristina, Kosovo. Some 21 protestors were taken into custody by Kosovo police after the incident, which occured behind the Palace of Youth at 11am on Tuesday. Spokesperson Karin …

SERBIA IMF representatives believe that increasing VAT is the only adequate measure the Serbian government can take to address its budget deficit, but are willing to accept other propositions, daily Blic reports. The IMF officials argue that public sector cuts proposed by the Serbian government, while laudable, are only a …

BULGARIA Bulgaria’s Economy and Energy Minister Traicho Traikov has named a new director for the Kozloduy nuclear facility after yesterday’s controversial resignation of the previous plant director, The Sofia Echo reports. Traikov appointed Dimitar Angelov as the new executive director of Bulgaria’s only nuclear power station on Tuesday. Angelov replaces …

SERBIA A group of young men threw two Molotov cocktails at the Greek embassy in Belgrade late Monday night, Tanjug news agency reports. No one was hurt in the incident. A window was broken and the fire-bombs caused minor damage to the facade, but otherwise the building was unscathed. A …

KOSOVO New US Ambassador Christopher Dell presented his credentials to Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu on Monday, reiterating his country’s strong support for Kosovo’s independence. This is the second time Ambassador Dell has led the US diplomatic mission in Kosovo. He was chief of mission in Pristina from 2000 to 2001. …

SERBIA Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic has expressed hope that the remaining war crimes fugitives, Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic, will be arrested by the end of the year, daily Vecernje Novosti reported Tuesday. “The action team, and the state’s top officials work hard every day on realisation of …

ROMANIA Romania’s public sector will shed 326,000 jobs by the 2015 deadline for the enforcement of a new pay law, Finance Minister Gheorghe Pogea said on Tuesday. Currently, there are 1,394 million public sector employees. The firings are in response to the unitary wage law, under which the minimum wage …

KOSOVO Several people have been injured after around 100 Serbs and 20 Albanians threw stones at each other in the troubled Kroi i Vitakut//Brdjani neighbourhood of Mitrovica, northern Kosovo. Serbs were protesting on Tuesday against the resumption of reconstruction work on homes in Mitrovica, which has long been a flashpoint. …