Warming up for the official start of the Macedonia presidential race, the ruling conservative VMRO DPMNE party came up with an unusual way to attack the candidate of the opposition Social Democrats, calling him ‘too rude’ to lead the nation. The VMRO party youth asked Ljubomir Frckoski to apologize to …

Kosovo’s authorities have said they are adamant about “defusing Serbia’s threats towards Kosovo’s territorial sovereignty” and would stop any Serbian officials entering Kosovo unannounced. Serbia’s Minister for Kosovo and Metohija, Goran Bogdanovic was stopped from coming into Kosovo at the weekend, with authorities saying he was planning to come into …

Around 13,000 Kosovo health workers went on strike on Tuesday to protest against delays in being awarded a pay hike, already promised last year. Kosovo’s Minsitry of Health promised to increase health workers’ wages by at least 44 euro a month in October 2008, a pledge that has yet to …

Bulgarian police found an unexploded bomb in the centre of Sofia in the early hours on Tuesday, the Interior Ministry said. The manager of Planet night club on Oborishte street, between Alexander Nevsky cathedral and Vassil Levski Boulevard, called the police about a suspicious package left outside the place in …

A Bulgarian court has sentenced Issa Mehmed, nicknamed ‘The Hacker’, to four and a half years in prison for founding an organized crime group, money laundering, financial fraud and extortion, Croatian Javno news reported Tuesday. Mehmed and four members of his criminal gang were arrested on 20 January 2008 for …

After several weeks of an intensive emergency vaccination campaign the mumps epidemic in Macedonia has topped 3,600 patiens, but authorities expect the infection to eventually let up in the coming weeks. More than 35,000 people were vaccinated in the nation-wide action so far, the health ministry informs. The epidemic started …

Montenegro will give each of its neighbours and former ex-Yugoslavs Serbia and Croatia a small submarine as a gift, said Montenegro’s army chief of staff, Dragan Samardzic. Slovenia already got one of the six small Tisa submarines, class Una, produced in the late 80’s for the Yugoslav Navy in Croatia’s …

Serbia would rather ask for more loans to make it through the financial crisis than sell its fixed telephony and electricity monopolies, Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic said on Tuesday. “It’s better for the state to go into debt that to sell Telekom,” Tanjug agency quoted Djelic as saying, adding …

Serbia needs a new deal with the International Monetary Fund, but with that money going ensure the macro-economic stability of the country and not to protect the dinar rate, Serbia’s central bank governor Radovan Jelasic said on Tuesday, adding that the state needs the deal also as an excuse for …

One of Macedonia’s biggest infrastructure projects, the building of a ring road round the capital Skopje, is nearing completion after several delays, officials told local media on Monday. Last July the authorities opened to traffic the first stretch of the 26-kilometer long road, part of the long running efforts by …