News archive of October 2017

According to the latest information, a 32-year-old Albanian, has been arrested for the murder of the lawyer Michalis Zafeiropoulos earlier this month.

The union of contract workers at Greece's Asylum Service are staging a two-day strike on Wednesday and Thursday to demand permanent jobs and payment of their wages for September.

In a statement on Tuesday, the union said there is concern that 100 contract workers stand to lose their jobs and warned that it will escalate strike action.

Athens said on Tuesday that it is closely monitoring events in Albania as TV footage in the neighboring country showed some 3,000 police arriving in Himara in the southeast of the country to oversee the demolition of several homes belonging to members of the ethnic Greek minority.

Doctors at state hospitals are to walk off the job for four hours from 11 a.m. on Wednesday to protest cuts to their salaries resulting from a new wage structure introduced by the government at the behest of international creditors.

Doctors are to hold a protest rally at noon outside the Health Ministry in central Athens.

Russian special services are in possession of intelligence suggesting that NGOs are collecting genetic material from the country's population, a Kremlin spokesman has confirmed.

The official statement comes just one day after President Vladimir Putin said that biological samples are being harvested "purposefully and professionally" all over Russia.

The countries that cheered when Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union broke up and insisted on "independent Kosovo" now say Catalonia's independence is unacceptable.

Political analyst and historian Nebojsa Malic observed this in an op-ed penned for RT, published under the headline, "Kosovo led to Catalonia. But West won't admit it."

Foreign Minister of Serbia Ivica Dacic said late on Monday there was "nothing new" in the messages conveyed recently by visiting of US official Brian Hoyt Yee.

Nevertheless, this was the first time he made it clear that Serbia cannot sit "on two chairs," Dacic said, according to Beta.

Head of the Serbian delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Dragan Sormaz says that "neither the US nor Russia should pressure Serbia."

According to the website centralmedia.rs, he spoke in the town of Jagodina, and stressed that "as the Russians say the United States should not pressure Serbia, so they should not do it."

According to media reports, FYROM (Macedonia) will recall its honorary consul in Spain, and shut down the Barcelona-based consulate.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will submit this proposal to the government on Tuesday, reports said.

Suriname has decided to withdraw its previous decision to recognize Kosovo as independent, Serbia's Foreign Minster Ivica Dacic announced on Tuesday.

The first deputy prime minister stressed that he received information about this from the South American country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that it came "after long-term work, and many conversations."