Kosovo Government Increases Pensions Ahead of Elections

A few months ahead of the parliamentary elections, Kosovo PM Albin Kurti announced a 20 percent increase in pensions for various categories of retired people, a move the opposition has called an attempt to “buy votes.” Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti announced on Monday that the government will increase pensions by 20 percent, a move…

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A Walk through Resistance: A Visitor’s Take from Kosovo’s Reporting House

An old socialist-era premise in Prishtina is offering visitors a unique perspective of Kosovo’s turbulent past with art pieces, photographs, videos, and artefacts displayed as part of BIRN’s Reporting House. Before entering the Reporting House exhibition hall, an eye-catching jeep awaits visitors. It is the vehicle that renowned war reporter Vaughan Smith used on mountainous…

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Kosovo Postpones Trial for Banjska Attack, Awaits Supreme Court Ruling

The first trial hearing for the 2023 deadly attack in Banjska was postponed to October, and Kosovo’s Supreme Court was asked to rule on whether the trial of fugitive kingpin Milan Radoicic and 41 others can be held in absentia. Scheduled to start on Wednesday, the trial at the Prishtina Basic Court over the deadly…

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Kosovo Commemorates Police Sergeant Killed in 2023 Banjska Attack

One year after Kosovo Police sergeant Afrim Bunjaku was killed when Serb gunmen led by Kosovo Serb kingpin Milan Radoicic attacked police in the village of Banjska, the authorities renamed a road leading to the village after him. Prime Minister Albin Kurti, members of the cabinet, parliament speaker Glauk Konjufca and police director Gazmed Hoxha…

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Kosovo’s 90s Turmoil : Elez Biberaj Recounts Key Interviews in VOA

Elez Biberaj, a Voice of America journalist, reflected in an interview with BIRN on how the 1980-1990s rising tensions in Kosovo prompted VOA leadership to send correspondents to report from the region. Biberaj, an ethnic Albanian from Montenegro, migrated to the U.S. with his family at the age of 15. He began working at VOA…

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Rural Renaissance: Agritourism Offers New Vitality to Kosovo’s Emptying Villages

In Kosovo, agritourism is on the rise, with people abandoning urban stress to invest in village revitalisation and establish a sustainable lifestyle away from the city. Adrian Berisha once felt shackled by the grind of urban life in Prishtina, which he likened to modern-day slavery. The ceaseless battle for affordability on stepping out of his…

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Prishtina Opens Shelter to Combat Stray Dog Crisis Amid Rising Attacks

In an effort to address the issue of stray dogs, the Municipality of Prishtina has opened a treatment and shelter centre for dogs, aiming to find adopters for them afterward. The Municipality of Prishtina on Wednesday inaugurated a centre for the treatment and sheltering of stray dogs on Wednesday, September 11, located just seven kilometres…

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Kosovo Citizen Found Guilty of Threatening BIRN Crew

A Kosovo court sentenced a man to four months in jail for threatening BIRN Kosovo journalists while they were reporting on a controversial initiative to build a Catholic church in a village in February. The Skenderaj/Srbica branch of the Basic Court of Mitrovica on Tuesday sentenced Mustafe Hasani to four months in prison for threatening…

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‘We Had an Impact’: Kosovo War Photographer Says Images Affected West’s Policies

Alan Chin, a photojournalist for the New York Times who covered the war in Kosovo said that powerful images of civilian suffering in the conflict ‘perhaps had influence on policies in the US and London’. New York-based photojournalist Alan Chin said during a lecture at BIRN’s Reporting House in Prishtina on Monday that images published in…

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EU Envoy in Prishtina Attempts to Break Kosovo- Serbia Dialogue Deadlock

Kosovo’s Foreign Minister Donika Gervalla Schwarz considered Serbia’s move to withdraw from the letter of reservations on the deal on normalisation of relations with Kosovo as “partial.” The European Union envoy on Kosovo- Serbia dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak, said on Friday that Serbia has withdrawn the letter it sent to the EU last year, in which…

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