Republic of Macedonia

The Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, the junior party in the ruling coalition, said that the FBI's involvement in a possible renewed investigation would instill much-needed public trust in the ethnically-charged case which sparked mass protests after the six Albanians were jailed for life for the murder of five ethnic Macedonians.

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Civil defense sirens are expected to go off all over Greece on Wednesday as part of the annual military and public warning exercise dubbed Parmenion after the Macedonian general of Philip II and Alexander the Great.

State control over the media, censorship, political clientelism and corrupt links between the government, media owners and the media are prevalent in the Macedonian media, new research presented on Tuesday in Skopje by the Macedonian Institute for Media, MIM, claims.

Six parties are expected to enter the Bulgarian National Assembly after early elections on Sunday, polling agency Sova Harris predicts.

Deal on reduction of roaming fees signed

BUDVA -- Rasim Ljajic signed an agreement on the reduction of roaming charges with the relevant ministers of Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) and Macedonia.

Bulgarian Chief Prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov and his Macedonian counterpart Marko Zvrlevski have backed the idea for the establishment of a network of chief prosecutors of the Balkan countries.

During a meeting on Monday, the two discussed the opportunities for cooperation between the chief prosecutors of the Balkan countries through a network.

It is up to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) to make the “next steps” needed to solve its name dispute with Greece, said Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos after meeting his counterpart from the neighboring country, Nikola Poposki, in New York late on Friday.

In his first address to the UN Security Council on Thursday, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov called for the speedier integration of the region into EU and NATO, warning of the risk of a "vacuum" that Islamic radicals will try to fill.

"Sooner or later, a vacuum tends to be filled. The European Union must not forget that the Balkans are part of Europe," he said.

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Macedonia's opposition Social Democrats, SDSM, have accused the government of leaving prisons in a catastrophic condition, alleging that three inmates died of neglect in Macedonia's largest prison, Idrizovo, in the last two weeks alone.

The ruling VMRO DPMNE party is mulling fresh general elections this November, the coordinator of the party's legislators, Ilija Dimovski, told the media.

"Time will tell whether elections will be held only for the vacant 31 seats of the opposition, or for all the 123 seats in parliament," Dimovski said on Monday.

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