Kosovo

Kosovo film-maker Blerta Zeqiri, known for her work inspired by issues like missing persons and LGBT rights, was honoured with France's top cultural award, the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.

The French ambassador to Kosovo, Marie-Christine Butel, gave Blerta Zeqiri the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters award at a ceremony in the French embassy in Pristina on Tuesday.

The Special Prosecution said on Wednesday that it has charged a woman identified only by the initials F.Z. with organising and participating in a terrorist group, and a male Kosovo citizen, Fitim Llavdrovci, with terror offences.

F.Z. is one of 110 Kosovo citizens who were repatriated from Syria in April.

"The story follows the life of young Dimitri returning as refugee to Kosovo shortly before the anti-Serb riots in 2004. This romanticized drama is made up of real events and will show French audiences the recent history of the Balkans from another, less biased angle", Arnaud Gouillon wrote.

Just over a decade since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, less than 10 per cent of ethnic Serbs in the majority-Albanian country believe their lives will improve in the next three years, according to the results of a survey.

US photographers Ron Haviv and Christopher Morris presented some of the most important of their images from the break-up of Yugoslavia in Zagreb on Tuesday evening, with Haviv saying that he went to the Balkan war zone in the 1990s to "witness history" for himself.

On paper, Kosovo is making life easier for business. But local firms say red tape continues to stifle growth.

More than three quarters of children living in state institutions in Serbia are children with disabilities, according to the latest United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty.

At 77 per cent, Serbia ranks joint third with Hungary behind Turkmenistan and China in a total of 57 countries analysed.

According to the media, Pristina is "in the state of shock".
"Prime Minister of the Republic of Albania, Edi Rama, has just published a map showing the Republic of Kosovo within the territory of Serbia", the Pristina-based Gazeta Express newspaper reported.

According to "Vecernje Novosti", which had insight into the proposal, the 35 chapters so far will be grouped in seven packages, so membership will be gradually acquired in seven phases.

Haxhi Balaj remembers that it was sunny on May 5, 1999, and that his mother Shehrije was trying to find something for lunch for the family.

They had run out of flour, among the many other things they were missing in those difficult days during the Kosovo war.