North Kosovo

Tatjana Lazarevic, editor-in-chief of the online news portal KosSev, was detained by police on the road from the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica/Mitrovice to nearby Zvecan, where she planned to go to the local health centre to investigate what she said were "multiple complaints" about its readiness to deal with cases of the novel coronavirus.

Reports of an outbreak of new COVID-19 cases in Serb-run northern Kosovo have sparked in-fighting among politicians in Kosovo and accusations of negligence.

On Sunday, the main hospital in the Serb-run north, in the divided town of Mitrovica, confirmed 26 cases in the three northern municipalities of Mitrovica North, Zvecan and Leposavic.

The Belgrade-funded parallel health system run by the Serbian minority in Kosovo is sending its COVID-19 test results to Serbia - with very little or no collaboration with Kosovo's own institutions.

Not only tests for COVID-19 in Serb-run municipalities in Kosovo but also the subsequent treatment of severe cases is taking place in Serbia.

In this endeavour, Thaci is believed to have secured support US President Donald Trump's envoy for Serbia-Kosovo peace negotiations, Richard Grenell. A man of many titles - he is also the acting Director of National Intelligence and the US ambassador to Germany - Grenell has denied that the partition of Kosovo has been discussed in secret as part of the rumoured peace deal.

Milena Ivanovic Popovic, the widow of murdered Kosovo Serb political party leader Oliver Ivanovic, was proposed on Wednesday as a witness in a defamation case launched by businessman Milan Radoicic, who has been accused of leading a criminal organisation that killed Ivanovic.

A memorial service will be held at 8.15 am, because at that exact time two years ago, Oliver Ivanovic was killed in Kosovska Mitrovica.

The Director of Serbia's Office for Kosovo, Marko Djuric, on Thursday denounced the arson attack on the car of Srpska Lista presidency member Slavko Simic in northern Kosovo in the early hours of the day.

"My father started the trade. We had customers from all parts of Mitrovica," said a Kosovo Albanian shopkeeper who gave his name as Blerim.

"During the war, the shop didn't work. After, we started working and mostly we sold basic foods. Not a lot of Serbs came to us then, but with time it changed."

Four football officials have been indicted in Kosovo for allegedly fixing a match played in the northern city of Mitrovica in February, to secure a Belgian-based relative of one of those involved 10,000 euros in prize winnings, media reported on Thursday.

Street artists have been decorating the walls of the Ibar bridge in Mitrovica with brightly-coloured murals during this month's Nomad festival, which is also part of a wider project called ARTivism which aims to connect communities through art.