Month: July 2018

A prominent Belgrade lawyer who in the past helped to defend late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic was shot dead, gangland-style, in front of his home on Saturday, police said. Dragoslav Ognjanovic, 57, was gunned down in front of his apartment building in the Novi Beograd neighborhood and his 26-year-old son was wounded in the right arm, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. As a prominent criminal lawyer, Ognjanovic served in the early 2000s on a legal team that helped to defend Milosevic at his war crimes trial before the U.N. tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Milosevic died …

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, responding to a threat by U.S. President Donald Trump to slap sanctions on Ankara if it did not free an American pastor, said his country would stand its ground, Haberturk TV reported Sunday. The friendship between the United States and Turkey is on the line in this dispute, Erdogan said, according to TRT Haber and other media. “We will not take a step back when faced with sanctions,” Erdogan was quoted as saying. “They should not forget that they will lose a sincere partner.” American pastor Andrew Brunson, who was transferred to house arrest this week after 21 months of detention in a …

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The U.K. government should increase oversight of social media like Facebook and election campaigns to protect democracy in the digital age, a parliamentary committee has recommended in a scathing report on fake news, data misuse and interference by Russia. The interim report by the House of Commons’ media committee, to be released Sunday, said democracy is facing a crisis because the combination of data analysis and social media allows campaigns to target voters with messages of hate without their consent. Tech giants like Facebook, which operate in a largely unregulated environment, are complicit because they haven’t done enough to protect …

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The U.S. State Department said Saturday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu discussed American pastor Andrew Brunson, who is being detained in Turkey on terrorism and espionage charges. Details of the conversation were not disclosed, but State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the two diplomats were “committed to continued discussions to resolve the matter and address other issues of common concern.” Brunson, an evangelical pastor from Black Mountain, North Carolina, was indicted on charges of helping a network led by U.S.-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey blames for a failed 2016 coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in addition to …

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The nun no longer goes to confession regularly, after an Italian priest forced himself on her while she was at her most vulnerable: recounting her sins to him in a university classroom nearly 20 years ago. At the time, the sister only told her provincial superior and her spiritual director, silenced by the Catholic Church’s culture of secrecy, her vows of obedience and her own fear, repulsion and shame. “It opened a great wound inside of me,” she told the Associated Press. “I pretended it didn’t happen.” After decades of silence, the nun is one of a handful worldwide to …

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Pope Francis has accepted U.S. prelate Theodore McCarrick’s offer to resign from the College of Cardinals following allegations of sexual abuse, including one involving an 11-year-old boy, and ordered him to conduct a “life of prayer and penance” in a home to be designated by the pontiff until a church trial is held, the Vatican said Saturday. Francis acted swiftly after receiving McCarrick’s letter of resignation Friday evening, after recent weeks have brought a spate of allegations that the 88-year-old prelate in the course of his distinguished clerical career had sexually abused both boys and adult seminarians. The revelations posed …

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Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has returned to Belgium to drum up support for Catalonia’s separatist movement after Spain’s bid to extradite him on rebellion charges from Germany failed.   Puigdemont arrived in Brussels Saturday morning and shook hands with the current regional president of Catalonia, Quim Torra, who had traveled from Spain to meet his predecessor.   Puigdemont fled Spain in October following an illegal and ineffective declaration of independence by secessionist lawmakers in northeastern Catalonia.   He had been in Germany since March when he was arrested on a Spanish warrant while traveling in car from Finland back …

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Not counting certain types of skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women in the U.S. and worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Now researchers in Europe have come up with a robotic device that may speed detection of cancer tumors, potentially saving thousands of lives. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. …

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Music festivals have gained serious significance for right-wing extremists in their effort to draw more supporters in Germany and across Europe, the country’s domestic intelligence agency told VOA on Friday. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BfV, said it estimated the number of right-wing extremists in Germany at 24,000 in 2017, up from 23,100 in 2016. Over half of them were thought to have no affiliation with organized groups while 4,500 showed allegiance to the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). Unlike previous years, when a small number of organized music festivals by right-wing members attracted only few …

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An Armenian court on Friday announced the arrest of former president Robert Kocharyan, whom special investigators had recently charged with usurping power. Yerevan City Court of General Jurisdiction announced Kocharyan’s detention less than a day after Armenian investigators filed a motion to have him arrested. One of Kocharyan’s defense lawyers, Aram Orbelyan, refused to give any further details of the arrest, citing the confidentiality of the preliminary investigation. He said his team is preparing a response that will be read at a news conference July 28. Mikael Harutyunyan, Kocharyan’s former defense chief, has also been charged in the case. It …

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Bulgaria’s top court ruled Friday that a European treaty to combat violence against women violates the constitution, likely eliminating any chance the treaty can be ratified. The center-right government of Prime Minister Boyko Borissov submitted the Istanbul Convention to parliament for ratification in January, only to withdraw it a few weeks later because of an uproar over its language about gender roles. Its critics include the influential Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the opposition Socialist party and the nationalist alliance United Patriots, which is in government. All said it could encourage young people to identify as transgender or third sex and lead to same-sex marriage. The Constitutional Court said the treaty …

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