Month: November 2017

The United Nations’ Yugoslav war crimes tribunal ruled Wednesday former Bosnian Serb army leader Ratko Mladic is guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the conflict in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. The court convicted Mladic on 10 of the 11 charges he faced, including persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, terror and unlawful attacks on civilians. He was sentenced to life in prison. “The crimes committed rank among the most heinous to humankind, and include genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity,” judge Alphons Orie said in reading the verdict. Genocide The court said Mladic …

READ MORE

Ahead of the judgement Wednesday of Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, here is a timeline of the 1990s Balkans conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia. – Bickering after Tito dies – Communist Yugoslavia, which emerged shortly after the end of World War II, was made up of six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia. Following the death of its autocratic leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980, the Yugoslav federation found itself in crisis, with bickering between ethnic groups and surging nationalist sentiments. By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, inter-ethnic relations in Yugoslavia were …

READ MORE

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is set to hand down a verdict in the case against former General Ratko Mladic, Bosnian Serb wartime commander charged with crimes in the 1990s ethnic conflict in Bosnia. Hero for many Serbs and a criminal known as “the Butcher of Bosnia” for many others, Mladic will hear his verdict on Wednesday after five years in jail and almost 16 years on the run. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports. …

READ MORE

United Nations judges in The Hague will decide within hours on a verdict in the trial of former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, who is accused of war crimes stemming from the conflict in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Mladic, known as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” is the last former military leader to face war crimes charges in the court, which was set up to deal with the aftermath of the Bosnian war that raged from 1992 through 1995. Mladic, who has been on trial since 2012, has been charged with 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and …

READ MORE

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed Tuesday to support the U.N. effort to “peacefully resolve” the nearly seven-year-long Syrian civil war. The White House said the two leaders talked for more than an hour and stressed the importance of ending the humanitarian crisis in which millions of Syrians have been displaced from their homes. Trump and Putin said the displaced Syrians should be allowed to return and “the stability of a unified Syria free of malign intervention and terrorist safe havens” should be ensured. Trump talked by phone with Putin a day after the Russian leader …

READ MORE

On November 5, more than 50,000 runners and two million spectators turned out for the New York Marathon. The event took place just a few days after a lone attacker drove a van into cyclists and pedestrians beside a busy Manhattan highway, killing eight people. Security was beefed up for the marathon: sand-filled sanitation trucks were deployed at key intersections to block vehicles, while hundreds of extra police backed by sniffer dogs and snipers were positioned along the 21-kilometer route. The precautions underline the changing nature of the terror threat, 16 years after the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks on the same …

READ MORE

The Vatican and China will exchange paintings, vases and sculptures in a bid to mend often strained ties through “the diplomacy of art”, officials said on Tuesday. Forty works from the Vatican will go on show in Beijing’s Forbidden City and 40 from China in the Vatican Museums in unprecedented simultaneous exhibitions in March, art chiefs from both countries told a news conference. “It will be an event that overcomes borders and time and that unites different cultures and civilizations,” Zhu Jiancheng, the head of the government-backed China Culture Investment Fund, said. “It will strengthen the friendship between China and …

READ MORE

Denmark intends to invest to boost efforts to prevent cyber attacks in a strategy to be presented early next year, its defense minister said on Tuesday. “We are going to spend more money in this area,” Claus Hjort Frederiksen told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Copenhagen, though he declined to disclose a figure. Cybersecurity is “very high on the agenda” for the right-leaning government, but also for the broad selection of Danish political parties negotiating a new defense strategy for the coming six years, he said. The government would like to expand an early warning system with …

READ MORE

The European Union’s top court Monday ordered Poland to stop logging in the ancient Bialowieza Forest, or pay an $118,000 daily fine. “Poland must immediately cease its active forest management operations in the Bialowieza Forest, except in exceptional cases where they are strictly necessary to ensure public safety,” the European Court of Justice wrote. The forest is home to rare plants, birds and mammals and is one of Europe’s last remaining primeval habitats. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The court first warned Poland against logging in July. Poland says the trees are weak and damaged by a beetle …

READ MORE

The European Union went back to its roots Monday by picking cities from two of its founding nations — France and the Netherlands — to host key agencies that will have move once Britain leaves the bloc in 2019. During voting so tight they were both decided by a lucky draw, EU members except Britain chose Amsterdam over Italy’s Milan as the new home of the European Medicines Agency and Paris over Dublin to host the European Banking Authority. Both currently are located in London. “We needed to draw lots in both cases,” Estonian EU Affairs Minister Matti Maasikas, who …

READ MORE