Skopje

The towering cross in the Aerodrom municipality of Skopje, which was sanctified this week, is a cultural artefact and not meant to cause religious or ethnic offence, said Todor Petrov, the head of the World Macedonian Congress, the NGO behind its construction.

“The cross is not erected to provoke and it is not an anti-Albanian or anti-Muslim symbol,” Petrov said.

Croatia, Macedonia and Bulgaria link their stock exchanges

BELGRADE - Rock'n'roll icon Billy Idol will be headlining the Belgrade Calling 2014 music festival at Donji Kalemegdan on Wednesday night.

The English superstar, who recently confirmed that his new studio album will be released in October, is on a tour of Europe this summer with his band, which includes guitar legend Steve Stevens.

Prime minister and ruling VMRO DPMNE party leader Nikola Gruevski and Zoran Zaev, the head of the main opposition party, the Social Democrats, SDSM, are starting talks on Tuesday in Skopje to discuss ending the crisis that erupted when the opposition disputed the April elections.

Twenty-eight-year-old Kurtishova, an actress with Skopje’s state-owned Children’s and Youth Theatre, said she was convinced that a police officer at Skopje airport prevented her from boarding a plane simply because she is Roma.

People in the two Balkan countries will be able to use PayPal services as of this week, the company announced.

The entry of PayPal to Macedonia and Montenegro forms part of an expansion of services to ten new countries across the world.

Defence attorney Naser Raufi told the Skopje criminal court in his closing arguments on Thursday that the seven accused had nothing to do with the murder of five ethnic Macedonians during Orthodox Easter in 2012.

Raufi who is the attorney for five of the defendants, all of whom are ethnic Albanians, said they should be released due to “lack of evidence”.

Construction works were launched on Thursday aiming to transform the city's Macedonia Square in line with the grand government revamp called Skopje 2014.

First on the agenda is construction of a large ground-level "jumping-jet" fountain, which will be 10 x 20 metres wide.

Prosecutor Gordana Geskovska told the Skopje court in her closing arguments on Friday that the murder of five ethnic Macedonians by a group of alleged Albanian extremists during Orthodox Easter in 2012 was an act of terror carried out in order to provoke ethnic strife.

After Sunday’s short torrential rain and hailstones the size of marbles, which took residents by surprise, the authorities on Tuesday restored matters to normal.