News archive of November 2017

Prime Minister Ana Brnabic spoke on Tuesday in Belgrade with Vice Chair of Italian Senate's Foreign Affairs Committee Paolo Corsini.

According to the Serbian government, Brnabic "thanked him for his country’s support to regional dialogue and stability of the Western Balkans, which it has shown through its activity within the Berlin Process."

Shinzo Abe was re-elected as Prime Minister of Japan after the ruling coalition of his Liberal Democratic Party and the New Comeyto Party won an impressive victory in the October 22nd parliamentary elections, Reuters reported.

A consortium led by France’s Total moved a step closer to exploring for oil and gas off Greece, after signing a lease on Tuesday with the government for a block in the Ionian Sea.

Pope Francis acknowledged that he had fallen asleep as he prayed. He said, however, that this is one of the many ways to honor God's name, the press reported.

"I, too, when I pray, sometimes fall asleep," the Pope said with a smile in an interview with Italian Catholic television Tu Wu 2000.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network has published an e-book about the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, aiming to increase understanding about the newly-established court that will try ex-guerrillas for crimes during and after the war.

The UK government has announced that it is accelerating preparations for the UK's exit from the EU, and will consider options with and without agreement, reports mediapool. 

In connection with Brexit, it was announced that between 3,000 and 5,000 people will be hired in 2018, the France press reported.

The Daily Mail reports that the students’ union of the prestigious King’s College London has hired “safe space marshals” to police the speech of speakers invited onto the campus, ensuring that they do not voice opinions that could be considered potentially offensive to students.

Spain's Constitutional Court has blocked Catalonia's declaration of independence, the Spanish daily El Mundo reported on Tuesday.

The Constitutional Court warned members of the permanent parliamentary office in Catalonia, including the sacked speaker of the Catalan parliament Carme Forcadell, to suspend any initiative that involves implementation of the declaration, the paper said.

"The Fall of Athens," Gail Holst-Warhaft's heartbreaking yet uplifting book on Greece and the Greeks, begins with a link to a song. "A song every Greek knows. It's by Vassilis Tsitsanis," she notes. It is "Synnefiasmeni Kyriaki" (Cloudy Sunday). An anthem of sorrow, written during the German occupation, it is a cry of pain and resignation and, at the same time, of hope and resilience.

U.S. social media companies have acknowledged that Russian entities used their platforms to sow discord and disinformation during and after the 2016 presidential campaign and pledged to better combat such abuses in the future.