Luxembourg

Bulgarian Tourism Minister Nikolina Angelkova has said the number of foreign visitors to Bulgaria for the winter tourist season is expected to be 5 to 7% up compared to the previous year.

In an interview with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), Angelkova has based her estimates on data from airports, bookings in winter resorts and other statistical data.

Sevil Erku?sevil.erkus@hurriyet.com.trDozens of passports seized when Turkish counterterrorism units detained two suspects at Istanbul's Atatürk Airport are authentic passports, all but one issued by EU-member countries, a senior Turkish official has said.  

No-one should ever be detained for the sole reason that he or she is an asylum seeker, said speakers in a debate on Wednesday evening. To apply for asylum is a basic human right, and detention can only be used as a measure of last resort, they insisted.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu held meetings with the leaders of Germany and several other nations in Brussels on Dec. 17 before a full EU summit to discuss the recent cooperation deal struck between Turkey and the EU.

Davuto?lu told reporters in Brussels that all leaders have "strongly supported" Turkish government's initiatives on the migrant issue.

The meeting between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on the refugee issue was completed on Thursday.

Mr. Tsipras underlined the importance of cooperation between Greece and Turkey on controlling and managing the refugees flows.

The European Union has seen little evidence that Turkey has managed to reduce departures of migrants for Greek islands in the two weeks since it signed an agreement to do so, an EU document showed on Dec. 17.

The UN released its annual Human Development Index (HDI) for 2015 and Norway is on the top for the 12th year in a row.

Norway scored 0.944 followed by Australia and Switzerland making them the best countries to live in for health, life expectancy, education and high incomes, whereas Greece ranked 29th with 0.865.

Turkey and eight EU countries as well as the EU Commission will come together to discuss the Syrian refugee issue at a meeting on Dec. 17 in Brussels, where Ankara hopes to learn the number of refugees these countries will receive in the coming year. 

German chancellor Angela Merkel will lead a meeting of eight European states and Turkey on the sidelines of an EU summit on Dec. 17 to discuss plans to resettle refugees from Turkey.

Recently intensified dialogue between Turkey and the EU has already produced the opening of chapter 17, which addresses economic and monetary policy, on Dec. 14, nearly two years after the last chapter was opened. This increased the number of opened chapters to 15 out of 35 with hopes that 2016 will witness the opening of five more chapters.