Kosovo

Jadranka Joksimovic, Serbia's Minister responsible for European integration, said that Serbia had now formed its negotiation team with the EU, which will have 24 members from the state administration, the academic community and NGOs .

The team will help formulate Serbia's negotiating position and report back to the government on the process.

Although Ivica Dacic recently announced that Greek PM Alexis Tsipras will visit Serbia in the fall, two Belgrade-based newspapers say this will not happen.

Thus the daily Blic writes that the package of conditions that Greece must fulfill to receive financial assistance from the West includes recognizing Kosovo.

A Kosovo government official has said that "15 most influential countries of Europe and the world are lobbying for Kosovo's membership in UNESCO." unacceptable

Petrit Selimi, who serves as deputy to Foreign Minister Hashim Thaci, told the Pristina-based Albanian language newspaper Zeri that UNESCO membership would bring Kosovo "great political and cultural benefits."

The 12th anniversary of the murder of two young Serbs and the wounding of four others has been marked in the village of Gorazdevac in Kosovo.

Twelve years after two Serb teenagers were shot dead and several others wounded in the Kosovo village of Gorazdevac, their families called on the authorities to finally prosecute the killers.

A petition calling for the abolition of free tuition privileges for Montenegrin citizens in Serbia has caused a stir after it was reported to have collected amost 14,000 signatures.

The petition calls on the Serbian education authorities to allow Montenegrins to attend state universities only as ordinary foreigners, which means they must pay to study.

Pristina's request for UNESCO membership has been sent directly to this organization - after the UN rejected Kosovo's application for UNESCO membership.

This is what Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic told the state television RTS late on Wednesday.

The deputy Kosovo foreign minister has denied Serbian FM Ivica Dacic's statement that the UN refused to forward Pristina's membership bid to UNESCO.

Croatia's tourism ministry says tourists from former Yugoslavia are coming to Croatia for their summer holidays in ever greater numbers, despite the recent political spats between politicians and states.

Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic's initiative for establishing a joint remembrance day for all victims of the wars of the 1990s "is a great step forward."