Macedonia

"Media freedom declines worldwide, including Serbia"

Serbia ranks as 67th out of 180 countries ranked according to the Press Freedom Index, according to the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) annual report.

The organization stressed that media freedom suffered a "drastic decline" worldwide last year.

BELGRADE - The Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade will host an exhibition titled Slavic Carnivals, authored by curators of 12 museums in Slavic countries, in June.

The exhibition, organized by the Forum of Slavic Cultures, under the auspices of UNESCO, will also feature a round table on new forms of carnival as tourism potential.

"Illegal migration to be tackled through joint efforts"

KELEBIJA -- The problem of illegal migration facing Serbia and Hungary is also affecting several EU member states, "so they should join forces to solve it."

That is what Serbian Police Director Milorad Veljovic told reporters on Wednesday.

KELEBIJA - The problem of illegal migration facing Serbia and Hungary is also affecting several EU member states, so they should join forces to solve it, Serbian Police Director Milorad Veljovic said on Wednesday.

Amid the continuing fall out over the HSBC scandal, a journalistic project in Romania has named a key figure in the ruling party as one of those who held secret accounts in the Swiss branch of the British bank.

Croatia's newly elected President, Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, is finalising preparations for her inauguration on Sunday.

The candidate of the opposition centre-right Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, she won the second round of the elections in January against the incumbent, Ivo Josipovic, by a smallest margin ever - just 32,509 votes.

Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias repeated the new Greek government?s claim for war reparations from Germany Tuesday during a joint news conference with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin.

Macedonia's main ruling party, VMRO DPMNE, has dismissed opposition allegations of conducting widespread wiretapping as nonsensical and contradictory, calling the Social Democratic Party leader, Zoran Zaev, "a puppet of foreign services".

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias will visit Berlin Tuesday and Moscow Wednesday to hold talks with his German and Russian counterparts at a time when European governments are concerned that the debt-wracked nation is cozying up to the Kremlin.

The increasingly authoritarian government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski in the neighboring former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYRoM) fell back on an “antiquated line of defense” last week in a bid to neutralize a political rival, namely, to indirectly involve Greek secret services.