Tunisia

With good bargains, many renovated hotels and a number of events Bulgaria "has turned professional" as a tourist destination, a German weekly media outlet writes.

Touristik Aktuell, which is specialized in writing about travels, events and destinations, quotes [DE] an official for German travel agency Schauinsland-Reisen as saying: "It smells like a Bulgarian summer."

Thousands of Moroccan trainee teachers and their families took to the streets of the capital Rabat on Jan. 24 to protest against government plans to cut education jobs, defying an official ban on demonstrations. 

German research, led by Dr. Andrea Flack of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany, has found that white storks are changing their migratory behavior. In the past, they were known to breed from Europe to north-west Africa and western Asia. Now, however, the birds are flocking to rubbish dumps where junk food can easily be found.

Tunisia imposed a nationwide overnight curfew on Jan. 22 in response to growing unrest over unemployment as protests across the country descended into vandalism in several cities.

As the latest barbarity of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Istanbul's Sultanahmet Square has demonstrated, fighting terror is difficult and it will keep Turkey and the world occupied for a long time. This is because it has sociologic and cultural resources that nurture it. This is the actual problem.
 

Tunisia's Islamist Ennahda Party became the biggest in parliament after more lawmakers in President Beji Caid Essebsi's Nidaa Tounes party resigned on Jan. 11 over the role of his son, saying they feared a return of the hereditary transfer of power. 

The European Commission has adopted a package of cross-border cooperation programmes totaling EUR 1 B to back social and economic development in the regions on both sides of the EU's external borders.

More than a third of Bulgarians have said they consider themselves to be "happy" with life, but the country lags behind in terms of "net happiness", a Gallup International poll has showed.

Pope Francis has been named the winner of the International Charlemagne Prize, awarded annually by the German city of Aachen for contributions to European unity.

The prize committee said Dec. 23 that the pontiff had sent "a message of hope and encouragement" at a time in which "many citizens in Europe are seeking orientation," news agency Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) reported.

Five years ago, in 2010, Turkey started to experience some issues with its "zero problems with neighbors" policy - specifically the flotilla problem when Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish citizens aboard the Gaza-bound humanitarian aid ship the Mavi Marmara.