"Severe drought takes toll on Balkans, with no relief in sight" December 04, 2011|By Amer Cohadzic, Associated Press
BEZDAN, Serbia - The waters of the mighty Danube are so low that dozens of cargo ships are stuck, stranded in ghostly fog or wedged into sand banks on what is normally one of eastern Europe’s busiest transport routes.
A lack of rain has triggered the worst drought in decades for this time of year, dropping river levels to record lows and sounding an alarm in parts of central and eastern Europe.
Power supplies are running low in Serbia, drinking water shortages have hit Bosnia, and crop production is in jeopardy in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary. The Czech Republic is at its driest since weather recordkeeping began in 1775.
Related: Czechs bid farewell to Vaclav Havel
Meteorologists say they are not sure why the region has had far less rain than average since August - but they don’t see any more coming quickly. That is bad news for shipping companies that are already reporting big losses.
“This is a disaster,’’ said Branko Savic, manager of a privately owned Danube shipping company in Serbia that he says is operating at only a third of its capacity. “Traffic on the Danube is practically nonexistent… . We are in dire need of enormous amounts of water, rain, or melting snow in order to better the situation.’’
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Sunken German World War II-era ships have surfaced on the Danube and unexploded bombs that fell during the 1940s emerged from the Sava river in Serbia.
See: Massive WWII bomb succesfully defused in Germany
At the Bosnian port of Brcko on the Sava river, workers have been told not to expect any work until further notice.
Drinking water curbs have been introduced at night in Sarajevo and other Bosnian cities.
Electricity supplies are also running low in Bosnia and Serbia because hydropower plants cannot produce enough power due to the low river water levels.
In Romania and Hungary, which had bumper wheat harvests this year, officials say the drought may severely damage next year’s production.
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"Gunman opens fire on US Embassy in Bosnia, wounding a police officer" October 29, 2011|Associated Press
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - A man opened fire with an automatic weapon yesterday in what authorities called a terrorist attack on the US Embassy in Bosnia....
Bosnian TV identified the shooter as Mevlid Jasarevic, from Novi Pazar, Serbia. It said he is a follower of the Wahhabi branch of Islam. Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic confirmed his identity.
Wahhabi is extremely conservative. It is rooted in Saudi Arabia and is linked to religious militants in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Serbian police said Jasarevic was briefly arrested a year ago for brandishing “a large knife’’ during a visit by the US ambassador to Serbia and by other Western envoys to Novi Pazar, the administrative capital of Sandzak in southern Serbia.
Western intelligence reports have alleged that the tense, impoverished area in Serbia, along with Muslim-dominated regions in Bosnia, are rich ground for recruiting so-called white Al Qaeda members - Muslims with Western features who could easily blend into European or US cities and carry out attacks.
PFFFFFFFFFFTTT!!!!!
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"Former Croatia official held in post-WWII killings; Allegedly ordered deaths of soldiers, anticommunists" November 03, 2011|By Darko Bandic, Associated Press
ZAGREB, Croatia - Croatia’s former interior minister was arrested yesterday over accusations that he ordered mass killings of anticommunists soon after the end of World War II, police said.
Josip Boljkovac, 89, and two other former ranking Croatian officials have been under investigation for the alleged murders in 1945 and 1946 of soldiers and sympathizers of Croatia’s Ustasha Nazi puppet regime that ruled during the war.
Boljkovac, who fought as a member of the Yugoslav communist guerrillas against the occupying German and Italian troops, was a senior officer of the secret service accused of revenge shootings of anticommunists.
Boljkovac is accused of command responsibility in the killing of thousands, including civilians, who were buried in unmarked graves across Croatia, said his lawyer, Anto Nobilo.
A US-based Jewish rights group expressed “alarm and shock’’ at the arrest. Tens of thousands of Jews, Serbs, and Roma perished in the Ustasha-run concentration camps in Croatia during the war.
“In view of Croatia’s consistent failure to prosecute criminals of the Nazi-allied Ustasha regime in its midst, its action against a fighter who opposed the evil Ustasha forces is hypocritical and unacceptable,’’ said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.
“The cruelties of the Ustasha were so brutal that even elements within the Nazi hierarchy expressed shock,’’ said his statement to the Associated Press. “Shame on Croatia for not seriously addressing these crimes.’’
So it was okay to kill them by behaving the same way they did?
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