ZAGREB

A boy stands next to a statue dedicated to Olympic gold medal-winning judoka, Majlinda Kelmendi, in her hometown of Peja, Kosovo, on February 28, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/Valdrin Xhemaj.

Serbia has no confirmed cases of coronavirus yet, but on Tuesday a WhatsApp voice message began doing the rounds on social media claiming several people had already died from the virus in the capital, Belgrade.

"Doctors are strictly forbidden to talk about the virus," the woman is heard saying on the message, which was published on several Serbian news portals.

The brother of a boy, who was diagnosed with coronavirus yesterday after returning from Milan where he and his girlfriend were at the Champions League game, got infected, "Jutarnji list" reports, citing Minister Beros' confirmation.
The girl was confirmed to be negative for the coronavirus.

The foreign ministers demanded rapid integration in the Western Balkans.

Within a few days, the EU will decide whether to start membership talks with Northern Macedonia and Albania. This was made clear during a meeting between the foreign ministers of Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia and representatives of the European Commission in Thessaloniki.

From May 1, 2020, direct flights between Bulgaria and Croatia will begin. They will be operated by the Croatian national airline Croatia Airlines.

Flights between the capitals of the two countries, Sofia and Zagreb, will be operated three times a week between May and the end of October 2020. Tickets are already being sold online, according to the Foreign Ministry press service.

Centre-left former Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic was sworn in as president of Croatia on Tuesday, six weeks after he defeated incumbent conservative Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic in a run-off election.

Like in Belgrade, the Zagreb development has been met with a chorus of criticism from architects, activists and city residents concerned over transparency, sidestepping of procedures and the loss of public and green spaces to plush and pricey residential and commercial towers of glass and steel.

Wily political operator

Interim Prime Minister Ludovic Orban has evoked the priority granted by the Government in Bucharest to the swift lift of the Co-operation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) within a meeting with Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova. The meeting took place on Sunday, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

On 16 February, representatives from six Western Balkans countries joined Presidents Michel and von der Leyen, Croatian Prime Minister Plenkovic and High Representative Borrell for a first informal meeting in Brussels to prepare the EU-Western Balkans Summit to be held in Zagreb in May 2020.

Croatia Airlines launches flights from the Croatian capital Zagreb to Sofia, Bulgaria and Podgorica, Montenegro in May, according to the business portal for monitoring the global Routes Online, quoted by BGNES.