News archive of February 2017

Russia's Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, approved a bill on an agreement between Russian and Turkish governments on the construction of the Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline on Feb. 1, TASS News Agency has reported. 

German police have arrested a 36-year-old Tunisian man suspected of trying to recruit people for ISIS. More than 1,100 German police searched 54 homes, business premises and mosques in Frankfurt and other towns in the western state of Hesse in the early hours of Wednesday arresting the Tunisian man suspected of planning an attack, German authorities said.

Serbia's only steelmaker, Chinese-owned Zelezara Smederevo, will not be affect by the European Commission's anti-dumping duties on China’s steel products.

This is what the EU delegation to Serbia said on its website, in a statement entitled, "False news about anti-dumping duties."

Following a flurry of activity over the eastern Aegean islets of Imia by the Turkish air force Wednesday morning after the Greek Defence Minister threw a wreath in commemoration of the 21st anniversary of the Imia crisis resulting in the death of three air force officers, two more F-16 fighter jets passed over the region at an altitude of 23,000 feet.

Last year was marked by two biggest threats to global democracy - populism and authoritarianism.

That is stated in the annual survey of the U.S. NGO Freedom House, entitled, “Populists and Autocrats: The Dual Threat to Global Democracy.”

Government sources late Tuesday admitted that almost two-thirds of the actions Greece's European lenders have demanded for the disbursement of the next tranche of emergency aid have yet to be completed.

The information was contained in a Bloomberg report published on Monday.

The Supreme Administrative Court has ruled Bulgarian authorities have to make sure electronic voting is enabled in every polling station in the country at the snap election scheduled for the end of March.

Turkey's top security board has indirectly urged the United States that "supplying weapons to terror organizations" would only "help terror gain strength and spread it," in an apparent reference to Washington's policy of allying with the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). 

Democrats for Strong Bulgaria (DSB) Chairman Radan Kanev on Tuesday became the chair of New Republic, which describes itself as a right-wing, non-partisan alliance.

At New Republic's founding assembly, three parties and three non-profit organizations declared themselves participants in the alliance.

Defense Minister Panos Kammenos and military chiefs on Wednesday flew by a military helicopter over the eastern Aegean Imia islets, the site of a military standoff with Turkey in 1996, to drop wreaths in memory of three Hellenic Navy officers who died when their helicopter crashed during a reconnaissance mission in the area.