Prosecutors said on Wednesday former Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku, wanted in Serbia on war crime charges, would stay in custody in Bulgaria for 72 hours while Sofia decided whether to extradite or release him. Bulgarian police arrested Ceku at the border with Macedonia on Tuesday night on an old Interpol arrest warrant issued by Serbia. Sofia was awaiting documents from Interpol and would decide how to proceed by Friday, Bulgaria's Chief Prosecutor Boris Velchev told reporters. Serbia indicted Ceku, a former top commander of Kosovo Albanian fighters during the 1998-1999 war, and some other Kosovo leaders, including current Prime Minister Hashim Thaci. Serbia's justice ministry said on Wednesday it filed a request to Sofia for extradition of Ceku. This is the fourth time Ceku has been arrested, but on earlier occasions authorities in Slovenia and Hungary did not hand him over to Belgrade. Last month, Ceku left Colombia following an expulsion order from the local security agency after Serbian authorities asked their Colombian counterparts to arrest him.
The struggle to tackle militant attacks in the Russian Caucuses regions of Chechnya and Ingushetia is continuing to plan, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov told RIA Novosti on Wednesday. "We began a joint fight against militants over a month ago and created an operational headquarters to coordinate the Chechen and Ingush special forces," Kadyrov said, adding: "They have achieved results and I have reported this to [President Dmitry] Medvedev. He has asked me to intensify the fight and bring it to an end." Kadyrov said that special forces from both of the republics are operating in the border zone between the republics alongside Russian troops, who are experienced in tackling terrorism. Russia's North Caucasus republics have been swept by a wave of violence recently two months after the government formally ended its decade-long counterterrorism operation in Chechnya, which witnessed two brutal separatist wars in the 1990s and early 2000s. Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya, continues to see frequent militant attacks on officials and police. Kadyrov is convinced that their combined efforts will end the militant violence in both Ingushetia and Chechnya. "We will get results and we will destroy these devils wherever they are hiding," Kadyrov said.
Turkey hopes to receive a green light from the United States at the end of the year to buy two critical weapons systems that would be used against the Kurdistan Workers' Party's, or PKK, officials have said. The two systems are the AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters and the sophisticated Reaper drones. Turkey wants to buy a small number of these choppers presently in the U.S. Marines' inventory, and officials from both countries said they were looking for a solution. During a visit to Washington early this month, Chief of the Turkish General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ said the acquisition of these helicopters was a high priority for the Turkish Army, and that he was keeping his hopes high. U.S. Ambassador to Ankara James Jeffrey said that if the United States found a way to transfer some of the Super Cobras to the Turkish military without hurting the front-line firepower capabilities of the Marines, it would. A senior Turkish procurement official said there was presently a window of opportunity for the transfer and that he expected Washington to agree to the sale before the end of this year. The United States has alternatively offered the sale of some AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, used by the U.S. Army, but Ankara has rejected the proposal, saying that it had no infrastructure support for these gunships.
Turkish jets have stepped up sorties over inhabited Greek islands, increasing tensions between Aegean neighbours Greece and Turkey, Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyanni said in an interview on Wednesday. Bakoyanni told Reuters she would raise the issue with her Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu when they meet for the first time at an informal meeting of OSCE foreign ministers on the island of Corfu this weekend. “The constant overflights by Turkish jets over inhabited Greek islands do not help improve the atmosphere between the two countries and I hope discussions with Mr. Davutoglu will help, to begin with, to change this atmosphere,” said Bakoyanni, whose country holds the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) presidency. The NATO allies came to the brink of war as recently as 1996 over a deserted Aegean islet but tensions had since eased. Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis’ visit to Turkey in January 2008 was seen as crowning 10 years of warming ties. But little progress has been made since and Greece has said Turkey had made no effort to defuse long-running territorial disputes and other differences. Their fighter jets still stage mock dog fights in disputed airspace. “These overflights over inhabited islands have increased in the last few months, and have caused concern in Greece and, I believe, among our EU partners,” Bakoyanni said. “It’s very important to have some progress and an improvement in the climate.” Greece supports Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, provided it resolves disputes and helps reunite Cyprus, divided since Turkey invaded the island in 1974. EU member Cyprus remains a main stumbling block for Ankara’s EU accession hopes and Bakoyanni said Ankara must realise how important the Cyprus issue is for its own future. “I hope Ankara realises that this is a very important issue for Turkey itself - resolving the Cyprus issue and proving to the international community that Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, Christians and Muslims, can live together harmoniously within the EU,” she said.
The United States and the European Union rejected on Wednesday Russian accusations that Washington and Brussels were to blame for the collapse of Moscow's unilateral bid to join the World Trade Organization. "Let's be clear on this -- this is a Russia-created crisis and one they have to resolve," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told Reuters. Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said in an interview on Tuesday that the EU and the United States were responsible for Moscow's decision to ditch unilateral talks for a joint WTO bid with Kazakhstan and Belarus. "We reject this claim. We have been facilitating this process. We have been helpful and very supportive of Russia's bid," Lutz Guellner, spokesman for EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton, said. Russia, the biggest economy outside the 153-member global trade watchdog, is now negotiating entry with its former Soviet neighbors as part of a proposed new customs union. The move, announced by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, came just days after Russian officials had held talks with U.S. and EU trade representatives. It has left the WTO secretariat in confusion. Russia has been negotiating to join the WTO for 16 years but Moscow says the United States and European Union have made unreasonable demands for entry. Moscow's accession stalled after Washington put the issue on ice over its opposition to Russia's war with Georgia in 2008. A trade spat between Moscow and Washington over a Russian ban on some U.S. meat imports, on health concerns related to the recent outbreak of the H1N1 virus -- otherwise known as swine flu -- has also hampered Russia's WTO bid. Moves by Moscow to place duties on imports of timber and cars from the EU, and threats of further tariffs on other goods ranging from shoes to furniture, have also hurt the WTO talks.
Among the legion of today's most popular diet regimens, the Mediterranean diet has become a poster child for healthy eating, garnering praise from nutrition experts and home gourmets alike. But while few would dispute the health benefits of such a diet, what is it about the Mediterranean menu that makes it so healthy? A study released Tuesday in the online edition of the British Medical Journal took aim at this very question. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and the University of Athens Medical School in Greece looked at more than 23,000 Greek men and women participating in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC). Over the course of about eight and a half years, the researchers led by Harvard's Dimitrios Trichopoulos and the University of Athens' Antonia Trichopoulou compared the health of the participants against their adherence to a Mediterranean diet. What they found was that certain foods in the diet, more than others, may offer the bulk of the nutritional benefits of the regimen. As the authors note, that the analysis "indicates that the dominant components of the Mediterranean diet score as a predictor of lower mortality are moderate consumption of [alcohol], low consumption of meat and meat products, and high consumption of vegetables, fruits and nuts, olive oil, and legumes."
Recent exchanges of views about Orthodox Christianity in North America, the role of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, events in the Antiochian Archdiocese, debates in the Romanian Episcopate, and pan-Orthodox sessions that deliberated on the "diaspora" -- without American participation -- emphasize how vital it is to reflect upon events that have shaped the current situation and to regularize Orthodox Christianity in North America. To address this need, and in a summer which might be described as the most pivotal in American Orthodox history, Saint Vladimir's Seminary hosted a conference June 18 to 20, 2009, the theme of which was "The Council and The Tomos: 20th Century Landmarks Towards a 21st Century Church," that focused on three visions that have shaped Orthodox Christianity in America: the vision of Saint Tikhon; the vision of autocephaly; and a vision for the future, which will be offered by Metropolitan Jonah at the conclusion of the conference. The symposium on Church unity featured presentations by His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah, Primate of the Orthodox Church in America; His Eminence, Archbishop Nathaniel of Detroit and the OCA's Romanian Episcopate; His Grace, Bishop Basil [Osborne] of Amphipolis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate's Exarchate for Orthodox Parishes of the Russian Tradition in Europe; Mr. Charles Ajalat, Chancellor of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America; and others.