Jeta Xharra, Country Director of BIRN office in Kosovo and editor-in-chief of TV programme, Life in Kosovo, lists in an opinion piece the key upsides and downsides of the June 11 general election, as she anticipates they are likely to be echoed in the local elections due on October 22.

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Kosovo's Foreign Minister, a former president and others have welcomed Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic's call for a new spirit of 'realism' on the issue of Kosovo. Kosovo Foreign Minister Enver Hoxhaj said that Serbian President's Aleksandar Vucic's plan to resolve relations between Belgrade and Pristina, would be a welcome turn in Serbia’s policy towards his country. "Breaking the silence and accepting the truth about independent and sovereignty … would open up the path for societal reconciliation, regional cooperation, European integration, and international affirmation," Hoxhaj told BI

Three sources told BIRN that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that former high-ranking police officer Goran ‘Guri’ Radosavljevic was responsible for the killings of the Albanian-American Bytyqi brothers in 1999.

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Ahead of Kosovo biggest cultural event, Dokufest director Veton Nurkollari told BIRN that the Prizren film festival was raising the game for Kosovo cinematography The 16th International Documentary and Short Films Festival in Prizren, Dokufest, will screen a total of 253 films in the southern city of Kosovo from August 4 to 12 under the slogans, “Future is my love” and “Future is not dead”. Some 102 of these films will be in six competition sections, representing 50 countries, including two world premieres, two international premieres and a number of European and regional premieres. See at:

The president of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, Ekatarina Trendafilova, told BIRN the new court has no ethnic bias, will protect its witnesses from intimidation and deliver justice impartially and independently In her first interview as president of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, judge Ekatarina Trendafilova told BIRN that the newly-established Hague-based institution that will try former Kosovo Liberation Army members for wartime and post-war human rights abuses will not b

As Kosovo's political parties jostle for the right to form the next government, the country's ethnic Serbian MPS have yet to decide which coalition or party to support.

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The family of three Albanian-American brothers killed in Serbia in 1999 want US officials to put pressure on President Aleksandar Vucic during his upcoming visit to Washington to resolve the case.

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Each summer, the Kosovo diaspora continue the tradition of returning home to marry, visit relatives – and hopefully spend a lot of money. http://bit.ly/2t6aR2Y

Although Kosovo fought to break away from Serbia in 1999 and proclaimed independence in 2008, Serbia continues to pay off its foreign debt because it considers the former province a part of its own territory. http://bit.ly/2tMAq6i