BIRN

The first report on cyber threats in Bosnia and Herzegovina has said the country is facing millions of cyber attacks each month, while lacking the strategies, legislation and capacity to protect its citizens, institutions and companies. 

Open call for applications for the European media hackathon to boost innovative synergy on the cutting edge of journalism and technologies

According to the findings of an investigation by BIRN and the Centre for Investigative Journalist Montenegro, CIN-CG, waste from other municipalities was disposed of at Mislov Do for years, in violation of the lease agreement, while municipal waste has been mixed with food, animal and chemical waste.

But in 2014, the Democratic Party of Socialists, which had run Rozaje for two decades, lost power in the municipality.

The new municipal authorities, led by the Bosniak Party and the Social Democratic Party, then suddenly decided to build the wastewater treatment plant at another location.

Even though the vast majority of reporters in the Balkans are women, top management positions are still dominated by their male counterparts and more needs to be done to ensure equal representation, an online panel discussion organised by BIRN on Tuesday was told.

Velic had fled to Srebrenica with her husband and children after her home village of Pobudje, near Bratunac, had come under fire.

But when Bosnian Serb forces seized Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, she and her family had to flee again.

"I thought: 'People will not survive, they will kill us.' And so they did," she recalled.

Digital rights violations have been rising across Southeastern Europe since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with a similar pattern - pro-government trolls and media threatening freedom of expression and attacking journalists who report such violations.

BIRN's TV show on Wednesday revealed corrupt practices at the laboratory of the Kosovo National Institute of Public Health, NIPHK, which resulted in the arrest of a lab technician who offered to speed up COVID-19 tests for money.

Exported across Europe, Romanian caviar was as legendary as it was expensive. In 1960s Britain, it was known as 'millionaires' food', fetching more than £16 per lb and helping to prop up Romania's shaky finances. "The state took everything back then," Ivanov said.

Dusan Varda recalls strolling through the Old City of Kotor one late-autumn evening last year.

"There was almost no one but waiters in smoothly ironed uniforms in empty, now mainly luxurious restaurants - this is now the typical image of Kotor in the off-season," he said, lamenting what has become of this walled city and its Venetian palaces in Montenegro's fjord-like Bay of Kotor.