Hungary

There was celebration and joy on both sides of the Slovenian-Croatian border as Croatia joined the Schengen area and adopted the euro on 1 January. More than 30 years after the countries broke away from Yugoslavia, their citizens are once again using the same currency and can cross the border freely.

As of today, Croatia has become the 20th member of the Eurozone and the 27th member of the Schengen area. More than 70 border points with Slovenia and Hungary and 12 - along the sea border are being removed. On this occasion, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is expected in Zagreb.

The European Union has frozen Russian assets worth around 17 billion euros since Moscow invaded Ukraine, EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said in an interview.     

The figure has risen from the roughly 13.8 billion euros ($13.75 billion) "from oligarchs and other entities" that Reynders announced in July that the EU had frozen, mainly in five countries.    

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Oct. 26 he would go to Türkiye "in the near future" to discuss Finland and Sweden's nearly completed process to join the military alliance.

The south-eastern Bulgarian region is among the 23 regions in the EU with the smallest share of young people who have completed secondary education, according to Eurostat data for 2021.

There, less than three-quarters of the 20- to 24-year-old population have a high school diploma.

The International Women and Justice Summit, organized every two years by the Women and Democracy Association (KADEM) together with the Family and Social Services Ministry, will be held on Nov. 4-5 in Istanbul, while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will give the opening speech.

"We do not worry about those who attack Hungary from the dark, somewhere from the towers in Brussels," he said in a speech on the occasion of the national holiday marking the 66th anniversary of the Hungarian revolution against the USSR in 1956.

"Bulgaria does not have many surplus weapons, not to mention that it does not have many serviceable weapons. If we had, the army would not face such difficulties. We have a serious problem with the maintenance of the equipment and a large percentage of it is faulty. I don't see what we can give out of the serviceable equipment we have.

Fourteen NATO allies signed a letter of intent on Thursday to jointly supply air defense systems, Reuters reports.

The allies agreed to jointly purchase air defense systems such as the Patriot and Arrow 3, which are manufactured by Boeing and Israel Aerospace Industries.

The signing ceremony took place at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The Polish operator of an oil pipeline says there are "no signs of any third-party interference" related to a leak in a pipeline that is the main source of crude oil from Russia to Germany.

PERN, the operator, said in a statement late Wednesday that its technical services had located the site of the spill after removing most of the contamination from the area.