Nikola Gruevski

Macedonia's Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki is visiting Albania on Monday as part of intensified contacts between the two Balkan neighbours.

Poposki is scheduled to meet his Albanian counterpart Ditmir Bushati and Prime Minister Edi Rama as well as the head of the foreign affairs committee in Parliament, Arta Dade, the Foreign Ministry in Skopje said in a press release.

As the large screens hiding the new look of the refurbished government building in Skopje were taken away in the last days of 2014, passers-by have been struck by its similarity to a very familiar building: the White House in Washington.

BELGRADE - The prime ministers of Macedonia and Slovenia and vice prime minister of Poland said at the third meeting of China and 16 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in Belgrade that cooperation between the countries is important for development of regional potentials.

The Macedonian students organization, the Students Plenum, has announced new actions against government plans to introduce "external testing" for graduates after it became apparent that the government would not abandon the plan.

BELGRADE - The second day of the Third Meeting of Heads of Government of China and Central and Eastern European Countries will be marked by a series of bilateral and multilateral meetings between the host and guests in Belgrade on Wednesday.

Macedonia's main opposition Social Democratic Party, SDSM, has come out against the country's proposed new coat of arms, saying the plan is being pushed as a distraction from the real problems.

"This is a typical example of how the government tries to shift public attention from the many affairs and scandals that they have to answer for," SDSM spokesperson Petre Shilegov said.

Macedonia is introducing a new coat of arms, a rampant red lion on a yellow shield topped with a crown, replacing the current symbols forged in the Communist era.

VIENNA - Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Zorana Mihajlovic said in Vienna on Monday that Serbia is a stable partner and wishes to have an even more active role in the future, especially in energy, infrastructure and transport interconnections.

Planned changes to the system of maternity leave payments, promoted last week by the State Health Insurance Fund, FZOM, called "Speedy Payment of Maternity Leave", will encourage discrimination against women at the workplace, rights activists say.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said on Sunday that only the country's appeals court could make the decision whether to ask the Federal Bureau of Investigation to become involved in any investigation of the disputed convictions in the multiple murder case that sparked ethnic unrest in Macedonia.

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