Belarus is ready to develop all-round cooperation with Qatar, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said as he met with Qatar Minister of State for Defence Affairs Hamad bin Ali Al Attiyah on 2nd  July. The Belarusian head of state noted that the two countries cooperate in various fields. ‘There are no closed topics. We are ready to cooperate in education, military and technical fields if your country is interested in it,’ the Belarusian leader said. ‘But you should know and please tell my good friend, the Emir of Qatar, that we are ready to cooperate with your country in all areas, we will always be a reliable partner for you,’ Alexander Lukashenko emphasised . The President believes the existing level of trade between the two countries ($18-20 million) is ridiculous. ‘We expect not only to double bilateral trade, but also to increase it several times,’ the Belarusian head of state said.

261,159 Austrians have signed a petition demanding a referendum on whether Austria should leave the EU. The number of signatories represents 4.12% of the electorate, and as it has had more than 100,000 signatures the question of a referendum must now be discussed in parliament. The petition was initiated by 66-year-old Inge Rauscher, who launched a similar petition back in 2000 which was only signed by 3.35% of the electorate. Rauscher said that she believes there was more support for a referendum this time around due to the economic downturn and the Greek crisis. In a press release she said it was ‘a great result, we want to go back to a neutral and peace-loving Austria’, adding that Austria is currently forced to endorse economic sanctions against Russia. She also said that she believes the EU is responsible for the economic downturn. She argues that withdrawal from the EU would lead to welfare gains of €9,800 per household per year, because Austria would no longer have to help fund the EU administration.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a Protestant Christian denomination that observes Saturday, the original seventh day of the Judeo-Christian week, and accentuates the imminent second coming (advent) of Jesus Christ. For more than 40 years efforts were made to establish the first Seventh-day Adventist Church in Principat d’Andorra, a very small country in the middle of the Pyrenean mountains. The prayer and work of a few dedicated families living in Andorra and Spain have produced the establishment of Associació Cristiana Adventista d’Andorra. The government of Andorra has existed with a peculiar arrangement since 1269 AD, as decreed in the Pareatge Agreements. The country has two heads of state or co-princes; one prince is the president of France, and the other is the Bishop of Urgell (Catalonia, Spain). The Andorran Constitution warrants non-discrimination for religious reasons, and freedom of cult and religion, but there is a specific mention that grants protection and preeminence to the traditional church of the nation. These laws explain why the nation's first Adventist Church has had to be registered as an ‘association.’

Albania is bracing itself for the risk that turmoil in Greece, its southern neighbour, will force tens of thousands of migrant Albanian workers to return home, cutting off remittances to hard-pressed families in one of post-communist eastern Europe’s poorest states. Government ministers in Tirana express confidence that Albania’s financial system can ride out the storm, even though three banks in Albania are Greek-owned and control almost 16 per cent of all assets in the Albanian banking sector. The concerns about the possible return of migrants underline that Albania and other Balkan states, rather than Greece’s Eurozone partners, could be the first to feel the economic and social ripple effects of the crisis in Athens. About 12 per cent of Albania’s 3.2m people live below the World Bank-defined poverty line of $2 a day. Albanian migrant workers have been going to Greece since the early 1990s.