Democratic League of Kosovo

With only a few days left before Sunday's snap polls in Kosovo, voters are again having to turn their attention to the election pledges of the political leaders touring towns and villages.

Acting President Vjosa Osmani paid tribute at Ibrahim Rugova's memorial in Pristina, saying that the path that he paved "remains a permanent guideline" for Kosovo.

BIRN Kosovo Director Jeta Xharra has been criticised after she and a camera crew visited the Infectious Disease Clinic on Prishtina in Tuesday, where dozens of COVID-19 patients were being treated, to see if it was possible to gain access.

Extraordinary local elections held in the municipalities of Podujeve/ Podujeva and North Mitrovica are seen as sending two signals; in one, they confirmed the growing popularity of Kosovo's biggest opposition party, Vetevendosje - and, in the other, Belgrade's continued influence in the Serb-majority north.

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.

Both the EU and the US opposed tariffs on the grounds that they are an obstacle to the resumption of Kosovo-Serbia dialogue. For the first time in decades, Kosovo found itself on the receiving end of international criticism, with the West effectively succumbing to Serbia's demand for an unconditional lifting of the tariffs as a condition to resume the dialogue.

Kosovo's largest parliamentarian party, the Vetevendosje Movement, LVV, staged a march in Pristina's main Skanderbeg Square on Friday to mark the 15th anniversary of its organisation - and the 21st anniversary of Kosovo's liberation from Serbian rule in 1999.

A Kosovo activist, Veron Hasani, has pressed charges against the bodyguards of President Hashim Thaci, after being detained for calling the president a "thief" and, he said, violently attacked.

Kosovo's parliament on Wednesday confirmed in office a new government led by Avdullah Hoti, the deputy leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, the junior party in the last government that initiated the no-confidence motion in March that toppled it.

MPs voted in the new government exactly four months after voting in Albin Kurti's Vetevendosje-led government on February 3.

Kosovo's parliament on Wednesday confirmed in office a new government led by Avdullah Hoti, the deputy leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, the junior party in the last government that initiated the no-confidence motion in March that toppled it.

MPs voted in the new government exactly four months after voting in Albin Kurti's Vetevendosje-led government on February 3.