News archive of September 2020

The retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic resumed on Tuesday with the first hearing since March at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, although Stanisic was not present in court because he has been granted provisional release due to health problems.

Bulgarian lawmakers are due to vote on Wednesday on changes to the constitution proposed by PM Boyko Borissov to defuse weeks of street protests. He looks set to lose.

Greek authorities have extended the reopening of schools by a week to Sept. 14, due to a surge in Covid-19 infections, the government said on Tuesday.

The chairman of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Marcel Ciolacu, said on Tuesday that all the "tricksters" that kept the Orban Government 'alive' are 'responsible', together with the National Liberal Party (PNL), for the "disaster" that regards COVID-19 infections. "A new negative record - 60 dead of COVID-19!

Following the low pass rates scored by this year's candidates in national university entrance exams, the Education Ministry is mulling the introduction of a minimum grade to become eligible for key courses at Greek universities.

The new school year started in several countries in the Balkan region and Central Europe with adapted teaching models and increased levels of protection in attempts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The government will take necessary actions to ban the lawyers with links to the terrorist organizations, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, slamming a group of lawyers that hung the poster of a female lawyer, who died after a seven-month-long hunger strike in protest of her detention on charges of terrorism.

Russia's foreign minister hailed the progress made in joint Russian-Turkish patrols in the Syrian province of Idlib.

Lawyer Peter Kolba from the Vienna Consumer Protection Association told BIRN ahead of the first hearing at the Federal Court in Vienna later this month of lawsuits of tourists brought by against the state of Austria for coronavirus infection at a popular ski resort that nine Croats are involved in the cases.

Police and the management at the Greek capital's Attiko Hospital continued on Tuesday to investigate the motives that drove a 59-year-old father of two to attack a nurse and then jump to his death from a fourth-floor window.

The incident occurred on Monday, while the 59-year-old patient was in recovery from surgery after he had been diagnosed with lung cancer on August 19.