Italy

Representatives of the pharmaceutical industry have appealed to the Health Ministry not to proceed with legislation that they say will limit access to new therapies.

In the first two months of 2017, police have prevented more than a dozen smuggler attempts to transport tons of cannabis into Italy or Greece, shifting their focus from a war against cannabis cultivation to a fight against its export.

An official Albanian State Police source told BIRN on Friday that the fight against drug smuggling attempts is a top priority at this time of year.

Azerbaijan aims to finalize the Southern Gas Corridor by 2020, Azerbaijani President İlham Aliyev has said.

The Southern Gas Corridor includes the South Caucasus Pipeline, Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).      

Who was the Berlin Painter and why is he so interesting? An exhibition starting on March 4 at Princeton University attempts to shed light on the life and work of the most important and influential artists living in ancient Athens in early 5 BC.

After the loss of the painter Dimitris Mitaras, the renowned man of Art, Giannis Kounellis died in Rome at the age of 81, leaving a huge legacy behind him for the next generations.

Patrols by the Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2) in the Aegean to stem the flow of migrants into Europe will continue despite objections by Turkey, defense ministers agreed Thursday at a NATO summit in Brussels.

Turkey's Eximbank is set to pour $40 billion in loans and insurance into more than 100,000 companies in 2017 and to launch its own rating system to measure companies' eligibility for loans, the head of the organization has said. 

The EU border agency Frontex stated on Wednesday that the bloc is experiencing high migration pressure, with about 382,000 illegal migrants arriving in European countries in 2016.

Frontex said that although the numbers decreased in comparison to 2015, it was still higher than any annual figure for arrivals in 2010-2014.

U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis issued assurances that the U.S.-led coalition will provide more support to Turkey's Euphrates Shield Operation during his first meeting with his Turkish counterpart Fikri Işık late on Feb. 15 on the margins of a NATO summit in Brussels, according to Turkish officials.

'The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between' by Hisham Matar (Penguin Random House, 280 pages, $26)