Croatia

BELGRADE - The 43rd International Film Festival FEST, set to begin on February 27, will be the first competitive edition of the festival, FEST's new art director Jugoslav Pantelic told Tanjug.

EP: Most Croatian amendments rejected

BRUSSELS -- The demands of Croat MEPs to add a series of requirements related to the country's unresolved issues with Serbia to an EP resolution have mostly been rejected.

Most of these amendments either failed to pass "procedural filters" or have been watered down, Tanjug reported, after seeing the text of the harmonized amendments.

JAGODINA - Krajina Serbs will file a lawsuit against Croatia for genocide in World War II and ethnic cleansing in the 1990s, says former Republic of Serb Krajina Prime Minister Borislav Mikelic.

European Parliamentarians have submitted 188 amendments to a draft resolution on Montenegro, which will be discussed on Monday, most of which urge Podgorica to resolve border and property disputes with neighbouring countries.

Bulgarian star tennis player Grigor Dimitrov has returned to the top 10 of the global ATP ranking.

Dimitrov moved one place up to number ten.

The 23-year-old Bulgarian has 3465 points, followed by Croatia's Marin Cilic with 3480 points, according to reports of dnevnik.bg.

Bulgaria ranks 23rd by EU funds absorption in the 28-nation bloc, according to statistics published by the European Commission's Directorate General for Regional Policy on the 2007-2013 programming period.

THE HAGUE - Goran Hadzic (56), a war crimes indictee in detention at The Hague, has asked the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to urgently grant him temporary release so he could undergo chemotherapy as he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, the ICTY said in a release on Friday.

The 11th festival of documentary movies, ZagrebDox, starts in the Croatian capital on Sunday.

Already a February tradition in Croatia, the festival will bring around 150 old and new documentaries from a worldwide selection, divided into 16 different themes over eight days.

BELGRADE - Representatives of the national associations of spas in Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia and Turkey inked an agreement on establishment of the Balkan Spa Institute on Friday.

The associations have been cooperating for ten years, and now they hope that other countries in the region will join them as well.

Bulgaria has outpaced Italy and the Czech Republic in the rate of EU fund absorption, EU statistics show.

Lithuania, at 93.7%, is the "champion" of absorption.

According to the Regional Policy directorate at the EU Commission, the country is currently ranking 23rd in terms of "percentage of available funds paid out by the Commission", up from the previous 25th place in 2014.