Macedonia

KUMANOVO - Macedonian police authorities are conducting a large scale raid in the area near the Kosovo border, in the villages of Gosince, Brest and Malina Mahala, Deputy Minister of Interior Ivo Kotevski said.

Searching houses in this region, mostly abandoned, the police found weapons and ammunition, Kotevski said, MIA news agency reported.

A first-ever local referendum in Macedonia, on the future of a famous mall in Skopje, appeared to have failed on Sunday after only 40 per cent of residents of the municipality of Centar cast ballots.

A 50-plus threshold was needed for the vote to be pronounced successful.

Residents of the Centar district of Skopje, Macedonia, will vote "Yes" or "No" on Sunday to plans to radically reshape one of the city's best-known landmarks.

The single question in the referendum - the first local one in Macedonia's history - is: "Do you support the preservation of the authentic look of GTC [the City Trade Centre]?"

Germany will have to decide whether it wants to support Greece or make an example of the SYRIZA-led administration, Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias said on Friday.

Police in Kilkis, northern Greece, said on Saturday that they had smashed a criminal racket alleged to have smuggled thousands of packets of contraband cigarettes into Greece.

Police said they arrested four Greek nationals, aged 24, 36, 37 and 48, on a rural road near the country?s border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) late on Thursday.

By Dimitra Manifava

The Federation of Thessaly Traders? Associations, in central Greece, on Thursday decided unequivocally that stores would not open on the first Sunday of the spring sales (May 3, as the law allows for).

"99.5 percent of asylum seekers returned to Serbia"

BELGRADE -- Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic says that 99.5 percent of Serbian citizens seeking asylum in EU countries have been sent back.

The reason is that Serbia has been declared a country of safe origin, he told a news conference on Friday.

Russia sees "lingering conflict potential in Balkans"

MOSCOW -- Russia was "deeply alarmed to learn that in the early hours of April 21 a group of armed men attacked the Macedonian checkpoint of Gosince."

A statement posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry's website explained that the incident happenedd on the Kosovo section of the border between Serbia and Macedonia.

A train hit a large group of about 50 migrants near the Macedonian city of Veles on Thursday, killing at least fourteen of them.

Migrants, who enter Macedonia from Greece on their way to western Europe, often use the railway as orientation through the unknown terrain, the Macedonian Information Agency (MIA) reports.

In a TV interview on Thursday, US ambassador Baily said Macedonia must resolve the political crisis concerning opposition claims that the government has gravely misused its powers, investigate those claims and - if need be - remove those that hamper credibility of the process.