Birn

Political elites and their grip on power are the main driving force behind state capture in the Western Balkans and Turkey, a new Transparency International report asserts.

The report, "Examining state capture", published on Tuesday, notes "two key enabling factors of state capture in the Western Balkans and Turkey: impunity for high-level corruption and tailor-made laws".

Bulgarian historians in a joint history commission continue to dispute the adjective "Macedonian" used in North Macedonia's history text books.

LGBT activists in Serbia have welcomed an announcement that the government will submit to parliament a draft law on same-sex partnerships before the year is out, but remain cautious after previous promises of new legislation were broken.

On BIRN's televised programme Jeta ne Kosove on Thursday, Agriculture Minister Besian Mustafa expressed his dismay at the failure of the justice system in Kosovo to shed light on the murder of his father, Xhemajl, in 2000.

Poland's battered judiciary scored a small but important victory on Tuesday, when Warsaw district court judge Igor Tuleya "survived" a hearing before the Disciplinary Chamber of the Supreme Court.

Experts called it a significant win in the struggle raging over ultimate political control of the Polish judiciary, in which Tuleya is seen as one of the most prominent independent figures.

A French journalist and an American academic have told BIRN that they were lobbied to write positively about "border corrections" and a potential land swap between Kosovo and Serbia.

On the morning of June 3 last year, village head Djordje Matijasevic stood on the riverbank. It was raining heavily.

In nearby Guca, where hundreds of thousands of revellers gather for a raucous trumpet festival every August, the river at around 6 a.m. was 65 cm high. Three hours later it stood at 2.29 metres and by midday the water had risen to 4.40 metres. 

An already worrying situation with domestic and gender-based violence in Bulgaria has worsened during the state of emergency, according to an NGO working in the field, the Sofia-based Bulgarian Fund for Women.

Eight women have lost their lives after being killed by their partner since the state of emergency was imposed on March 13, the fund said.

Arbnora Shkreta lives with her family in Sweden, but never fails to visit her native Kosovo twice a year, once in the summer and again in the winter. This year may be different, however.

Rights activists working with migrants and refugees said they were unclear why the Serbian army had deployed in Sid, a border town hosting three migrant and refugees camps, as the situation was calm and no incidents had been reported.