News in Brief Around the Region

News in Brief Around the Region: "albania, Macedonia, Greece, Croatia, BH, Cyprus....

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Albania: EIC Europetrol Company presented a new technology that would improve oil exploitation and electricity production in Albania,
which uses catalytic liquids to exploit oil and produce electricity.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha, who attended the presentation, invited EIC representatives to experiment and implement the new technique in the country.

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Macedonia's first Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan centre will be established at the Institute for Pathophysiology and Nuclear Medicine in Skopje, Health Minister Imer Selmani said. The centre's will cost around 4m euros, and is expected to be operational in about two years. The government will open a tender for supply of equipment in the coming months. PET scans boost diagnostics and therapy in the fields of oncology, cardiology, haematology and neurology.

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Bosnia and Herzegovina's (BiH) Ministry of Justice received new software from USAID for processing and tracking cases. The programme also enables easy access to the database related to cases involving serious crimes.

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Croatia and Israel sealed a declaration to establish a joint fund for science, during Croatian Minister of Science, Education and Sport Dragan Primorac's visit to Jerusalem last week. The future fund is planned as part of an ongoing Croatian-Israeli programme for co-operation in the science sector, and will enable joint investments in high technology and research.

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Bulgaria's first centre for aerospace monitoring opened at the Civil Protection National Service's headquarters in Sofia on July 16th. The centre, said to be the most modern facility of this type in the Balkans, was built under a project of the Ministry of State Policy for Calamities and Disasters. It is aimed at supporting the processes of forecasting, early warning and monitoring of natural disasters and catastrophes to enable real-time control and crisis management in Bulgaria and beyond.

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Greece approved a new national framework research and technology programme on July 17th, aimed to make Greece an internationally competitive, knowledge-driven economy. The programme envisions boosting co-operation between universities, research centres and the major domestic and international organisations operating in this field, intensifying research activities by incentives for scientists and innovators, and promoting new technology-based entrepreneurship.

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Cyprus: Construction of a new Innovation Centre at the Near East University in the Turkish-run northern part of Cyprus officially began last week, under a joint project run by local authorities and IBM Turkey. The ambitious initiative envisions the installation at the centre of the fastest supercomputers in the wider region of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and North Africa, according to the university. The centre will focus on climate research, earthquake simulations, medicine, pharmaceuticals, nanotechnology and genetic technology. (setimes)