Greek ferries blocked till Wednesday at least

Turkish prosecution demands 3,000 years in prison for Gülen

The prosecution of Turkey demands more than 3.6 thousand years in prison for oppositional preacher Fethullah Gülen, living in voluntary exile in the USA on all charges against him, the Hürriyet Daily News reports. Gülen has been accused of involvement in the 15 July 2016 coup attempt in over 20 criminal trials, but he denies it all. Some 32,000 people were arrested after the coup in Turkey and 100,000 state employees were fired or suspended from work.

Skopje’s State Gazette has published the decision for the election of Talat Xhaferi as a new chair of the Macedonian parliament. After Xhaferi’s election on April 27 by MPs of the Social Democrats and the Albanian formations, turmoil occurred inside the building of the national assembly with over 100 MPs, administration employees, police officers and journalists injured. The VMRO-DPMNE party says the election was illegal. Large-scale protests, organized by the For a United Macedonia civic movement have been insisting on new early elections and a census for 71 days now.

Albania to hold elections without opposition

Albania’s Central Election Committee has proclaimed that a total of 15 political formations will take part in the polls on June 18 and none of those is oppositional. The oppositional Democratic Party of Lulzim Basha has warned many times now that it won’t participate in any election, organized by the current government of PM Edi Rama. After the CEC announcement Basha stated that there would be no parliamentary polls on June 18 in Albania and that the largest protest ever would take place on May 13.

Serbia to continue allocating serious money to army

Premier and newly-elected President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić stated that his country would continue to invest into its army. On the eve of the Steel 2017 military training Vučić proclaimed that the army would display all its powerful tools, many new cannons among those. Citizens will be able to see how the so-called guided missiles are shot with their trajectory subject to remote corrections. A 10-12-km-long shot will be demonstrated, but we are preparing for targets situated 50 km away, the Serbian premier pointed out.

USA calls on Kosovo to ratify demarcation of border with Montenegro

The Pristina Embassy of the USA has called on Kosovo’s political parties to ratify the agreement for demarcation of the border with neighboring Montenegro. A message of the institution states that the border demarcation, established according to the treaty has been correctly drawn and any arguments and disagreements on the matter only harm the state. However, the opposition is convinced that the treaty means territorial losses for the country and states firmly its intention to interfere into any ratification attempt.

Compiled by: Stoimen Pavlov

English version: Zhivko Stanchev