I. B92 - UNESCO ratifies Kosovo document
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee ratified a document which contains Serbia's statement on the importance of its medieval monuments located in Kosovo. The UNESCO committee met in Brasilia, Brazil. The Serbian Ministry of Culture stated in a statement that Serbia submitted to the UNESCO World Heritage Center the text which refers to the exceptional universal value due to which the Serb Orthodox Christian medieval monasteries in Kosovo entered the UNESCO's list of world cultural heritage, and that of endangered world heritage sites. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee ratified the document and added a footnote in which it confirms abidance by UNSC Resolution 1244 on Kosovo. At the session, the committee also adopted a decision on defining the borders for cultural monuments which entered the UNESCO's world cultural heritage list before 2000, which include the Stari Ras and Sopoćani Monastery monument area, and the Studenica Monastery. The session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee was held in Brazil's capital from July 25 to August 3, and the Serbian delegation was headed by Minister of Culture Nebojša Bradić.
II. RT - UN membership door closed for Kosovo
Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin has made it clear that Moscow will not allow Kosovo to join the organization and that UN Resolution 1244, which confirms Serbia’s territorial integrity, will not be amended. Churkin hinted at the veto power Russia has as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, which the country presides in August. In addition, the Russian Ambassador promised that Moscow will back Serbia’s draft resolution on Kosovo. Belgrade submitted the document to the UN General Assembly shortly after the organization’s highest court ruled that Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008, was not violating international law. Talking to journalists prior to the Security Council meeting on Kosovo, Churkin confirmed that the document will be discussed at the General Assembly session in September this year. “As for Russia’s position, we will support the resolution,” he said. Russia has opposed Kosovo’s unilateral secession from Serbia ever since it was declared, and underlined that The Hague court’s ruling has not changed Moscow's stance. On Tuesday, representatives of both conflicting sides – Serbia and Kosovo – faced each other at the UN Security Council meeting in New York. Kosovar Albanian authorities urged the UN to cancel Resolution 1244 and to let Kosovo become a member of the organization. Encouraged by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling, Pristina had filed a request to the UN urging its members to recognize Kosovo’s independence. Belgrade, for its part, maintains that under no circumstances will it recognize Kosovo’s independence. The diplomat said that Resolution 12 44 remains key to sorting out the Kosovo issue. He admitted that there is no perfect solution to the situation, but assured that they will continue working until a compromise on Kosovo is found. He also noted that a significant majority of UN member states, including the Security Council members, respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia. So far, Kosovo has been recognized by 69 states, including the US, and 22 out of 27 EU states. Serbia, Russia, China, India, Spain and Greece have insisted that the Albanian-dominated Kosovo has violated international law.
III. AGAIN&AGAIN - Anniversary of “Operation Storm”
August 4 is the anniversary of Operation Storm, in which, in 1995, the Croatian army, with massive American support, killed 14,000 Serbs, expelled 200,000 and destroyed three-quarters of their homes, without a word of protest from the Western press. Many of these refugees found their way to Canada. Hundreds of them live in this city, yet their story remains unknown to most of us. The received wisdom is that, in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic, caused the war by invading the Yugoslav republics to create a Greater Serbia. Parallels were drawn to Hitler and the Third Reich and staged photographs appeared to confirm the existence of concentration camps in Bosnia. The true story is the complete opposite of this one. During WWII, Germany’s ally, the Croatian Ustashe, murdered 600,000 Serbs in Jasenovac concentration camp. The Bosnian Muslims and the Albanians in Kosovo raised battalions for the Waffen SS and Mussolini united Kosovo with Albania. The Serbs were our courageous allies, whose support of us caused them terrible suffering. In the 1990s a pro-Ustashe government in Croatia, an Islamist president in Bosnia, and Albanian nationalists in Kosovo began the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from areas in which they had lived for hundreds of years. During EU negotiations to resolve the conflict, Germany unilaterally recognized the independence of its wartime ally Croatia, despite warnings that this would make peace impossible. Henry Kissinger stated, “Premature recognition called into being a civil war, not a country.” Premature recognition resulted in a bloodbath. The Serbs did not cause the war. Nazi admirers did. For this reason, it is ludicrous for Canadian public opinion to equate Serbs with Nazis. There were two peace agreements negotiated by the EU and the US, both of which the Serbs adhered to. The Vance Peace Accord curtailed hostilities between Croatia and Serbia. The accord was broken by Croatia and a lightly armed Canadian battalion of peacekeepers was engaged in a firefight to protect three Serb villages from ethnic cleansing. Its commanding officer, Col Jim Calvin, is a true Canadian hero, yet few of us have heard of him or his battalion. The Bosnian Muslims broke the second peace agreement, the Lisbon Agreement, designed to secure peace in Bosnia. The Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic then warned, “Abandoning the Lisbon Agreement will lead to hundreds of thousands dead and hundreds of towns destroyed.” Once again, the Serbs kept their word, whereas their opponents did not. The demonization of the Serbs in Canadian minds is pervasive and unjust. Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cernak and Mladen Markac, the Croatian generals who planned and executed Operation Storm, were indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Next time you meet a Serb, please remember this article and greet them with respect. Our slander and ignorance has put them through a very great deal.
Women who follow a traditional Mediterranean diet may have a lower risk of developing breast cancer after menopause than women with different eating habits, a new study suggests. Researchers found that among 14,800 Greek women followed for a decade, those who kept most closely to the region's traditional diet were less likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than those whose eating habits were least Mediterranean-like. The link was seen only among women who were past menopause, and not younger women. Among postmenopausal women, those with the highest Mediterranean diet "scores" were 22 percent less likely to develop breast cancer during the study than those with the lowest scores. The findings, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, do not prove that the diet itself offers protection against breast cancer. If such a link is proven in future studies, however, the authors estimate that if all women in their study population had closely adhered to a traditional Mediterranean diet, about 10 percent of the 127 postmenopausal breast cancers in the group would have been avoided. Despite the preliminary nature of the findings, they add to research tying the traditional Mediterranean diet to lower risks of heart disease and certain cancers, such as cancers of the colon and stomach. In general, the Mediterranean diet is rich in fish, olive oil, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and legumes, and relatively low in red meat and dairy. Researchers have long speculated that the diet may help explain why nations in the Mediterranean region have historically had lower rates of heart disease and some cancers, including breast cancer, compared with other European countries and the United States. The current study focused on women in Greece, as it is the "cradle" of the Mediterranean diet, and a large segment of the population still adheres to it.
V. JPOST - Israel: Lebanon responsible for border clash
Facing the first deadly cross-border skirmish in the North since coming into office in March 2009, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned Tuesday that he held the Lebanese government directly responsible for the “violent provocation” that killed one officer and left another seriously wounded. Following consultations throughout the day with senior security, intelligence and diplomatic officials, Netanyahu issued a statement saying Israel viewed the incident “very gravely,” and saw it as a blatant violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which put an end to the Second Lebanon War in 2006. “I see the Lebanese government as directly responsible for this violent provocation against Israel,” he said. “Israel responded, and will respond aggressively in the future, to all efforts to disturb the quiet on the northern border and harm the citizens of the North and the soldiers protecting them.” Netanyahu will convene the security cabinet on Wednesday to discuss both the Lebanon incident and Monday’s rocket attack from Sinai on Eilat. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, meanwhile, warned Lebanon against continued provocations, and called on the Lebanese government to probe who was responsible for Tuesday’s attack.
The deadly rocket attacks on Israel and Jordan's Red Sea ports were carried out by the militant Palestinian Hamas group operating from Egypt, an Egyptian official said Wednesday after days of denials. Immediately after a barrage of rockets crashed into the sea near Israel's Eilat resort town and killed a taxi driver in Jordan's Aqaba port, Egyptian officials had strongly denied they had come from its soil. The security official said Hamas had fired seven rockets, including one which misfired and left debris near a security facility in the town of Taba. The attackers fired Soviet-style Grad rockets of the type used by militants in Lebanon and Gaza, he added, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The rockets hit a narrow area of the Red Coast where the Israeli and Jordanian ports are located side by side. One person was killed and four people wounded. It was the second such attack this year, after a similar volley in April that Israel also said was fired from Egypt. Aqaba and Eilat are more than 190 miles (300 kilometers) from Hamas' stronghold in the Gaza Strip.
Six years ago, hip hop icon Wyclef Jean released a soulful tune called "President," in which he fantasized about what it would be like to lead a country. That fantasy may come closer to reality when the Haitian-American recording artist announces exclusively on CNN's "Larry King Live" that he intends to run for president of Haiti. Jean, who had been an outspoken proponent for Haiti through his Yele Foundation, told CNN Tuesday that plans to make the major announcement on King's show Thursday night. He was one of the first celebrities to offer aid after the devastating earthquake there in January. He told CNN late last month that he has filled out the necessary paperwork to make a run at the country's highest office. "I've always promoted Haiti in my music, since my first album with the Fugees where we talked about what Haitians are going through and about human rights for people around the world," Jean said. "This is how we came in the game, we never thought we were going to be music stars because the topics we talked about were not very popular in mainstream music." The January 12 earthquake in Haiti killed more than 220,000 people, destroyed 60 percent of government infrastructure and left more than 180,000 homes uninhabitable. While little is known about Jean's political agenda, some of the lyrics from his song "President" may provide a sneak peek: "Instead of spending billions on the war. I can use that money, to feed the poor."