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SAMIR KRILIC Associated Press Writer Released : Thursday, June 19, 2008 12:39 PM SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina-An EU peacekeeping helicopter belonging to the Spanish military crashed in Bosnia on Thursday, killing the four service members aboard, two from Spain and two from Germany, officials said. The cause of the crash near the north-central city of Banja Luka was not immediately known, but it was witnessed by a second Spanish military helicopter, Spain's Defense Ministry said in Madrid. Lt. Santiago Hormigo Ledesma and Sgt. Joaquin Lopez Moreno, both of the Spanish army, and two German servicemen died in the crash, the ministry said....

A man whose heart had stopped beating woke up just as surgeons were about to remove his organs for donation, it was disclosed yesterday. Doctors in Paris earlier this year called in transplant surgeons after failing to resuscitate a 45-year old man believed to have suffered a massive heart attack in the French capital. According to a report by the Paris university hospital's ethics committee - seen by Le Monde newspaper - doctors continued providing a heart massage for an hour and a half while they waited for the surgeons to arrive. When the surgeons began operating on the man...

Lee Bradley, His wife and four children had recently moved into a rental property in West Bromwich, West Midlands when curious Bradley ventured to take a peek in the attic, and what a surprise! What Bradley saw scared him so bad, he closed the hatch and immediately dialed 999: 12 illegal immigrants sitting on mattresses, eating sandwiches. Walls to the adjoining houses had been knocked down to make room for them all. The several families scrambled before the police arrived but the officers did seek to contact the owners of the other properties.

BY ALISON GENDAR, BRIAN HARMON, BARRY PADDOCK, XANA O'NEILL and LARRY McSHANE DAILY NEWS WRITERS Friday, May 30th 2008, 4:00 AM A spurned boyfriend ordered two thugs to slash his ex-love's pretty face with a razor and broken beer bottle as she worked in a luxury Chinatown condo, police sources said Thursday. Aleksander Vacaj, an Albanian national, remained on the run Thursday after ordering the pair to "Frankenstein" the woman - slice her up as payback for her rejection, the sources said. The attackers were shot by an off-duty NYPD detective who was dating victim Artende Gjeli. The cop wound...

Posted on Sat, May. 31, 2008 Special Report By Chris Mondics INQUIRER STAFF WRITER DOBOJ, Bosnia - For years, Saudi Arabia flatly denied it had provided money and logistical support for Islamist militant groups that attacked Western targets. But that assertion is disputed by a former al-Qaeda commander who testified in a United Nations war-crimes trial that his unit was funded by the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a government charity. Ali Ahmed Ali Hamad, the former al-Qaeda fighter, gave the same account to The Inquirer in an interview in this struggling city in the central...

1 June 2008, Sunday Shootings led to at least one death and allegations of ballot fraud, forcing elections officials to suspend voting in at least 17 polling stations at the start of Macedonia's early parliamentary election, Darik News reported. Before the polls opened, the campaign was tainted by violence among rival ethnic Albanian parties and claims of fraud in more than a dozen pre-election attacks. The most serious election day violence began within hours of polls opening in the former ethnic Albanian rebel stronghold of Aracinovo, a village near Skopje, where two separate shootings left one person dead and three...

HELSINKI, Finland — A Finn who served as a peacekeeper in Kosovo until a week ago fatally shot a man and wounded another before shooting himself dead in northern Finland, police said Sunday. Officers investigating the incident said they did not know of a motive, and declined to name the gunman. Witnesses told police the man had arrived outside a popular nightclub in the town of Rovaniemi, near the Arctic Circle, at about 3 a.m. and opened fire with a revolver as people came out of the club. Officers also found a hunting rifle by the dead gunman. The man,...

Three armed men, believed to be Albanians, burst into a cafe in the central Athens district of Aghios Panteleimonas late on Wednesday night and shot dead three customers in what police believe was a settling of accounts between rival protection gangs in the area. According to police, two of the three victims were probably killed by mistake. A 38-year Albanian was the target of the attack. A second Albanian, aged 26, and a Romanian, aged 37, were probably killed accidentally, according to police who found 35 cartridge cases at the scene. The assailants entered the cafe at about 10.30 p.m.,...

15 May 2008 Zagreb _ Croatia’s former deputy defence minister has threatened to name and shame those who breached the 1990s arms embargo during the Yugoslav wars. Vladimir Zagorec, who is facing extradition from Austria to the Croatia for embezzling state funds, issued the warning after a court turned down his appeal. He told a Vienna weekly that he would be forced to give his lawyers documents showing that the purchase of weapons for Croatian forces during the United Nations embargo continued unchecked. “The violation of the UN embargo doesn’t expire regardless of which country was involved, or if it...

13 May 2008 | 20:04 | Source: Tanjug PRIZREN -- A 40-year-old woman serving with the Kosovo police, KPS, has been found dead in Prizren. The regional KPS office confirmed this, and added that the body was found in the Pariz Motel. The killer shot the victim four times in the head firing from her service pistol. Police detained one man in connection to the case, and identified him only as being a Kosovo Albanian.

KONSTANTIN TESTORIDES Associated Press Writer Released : Monday, May 12, 2008 2:03 PM SKOPJE, Macedonia-Gunmen shot at the car of an ethnic Albanian party leader while he was campaigning for the June 1 general election, police said Monday. Ali Ahmeti, leader of the Democratic Union for Integration, or DUI, was not hurt in the shooting near northwest city of Tetovo. Police also reported that four DUI regional offices were damaged in separate attacks Monday, three involving gunfire and the fourth by a hand grenade. No one was hurt, authorities said. Ahmeti described the attack against him as an assassination attempt....

Thursday May 8, 2008 Police said yesterday they had smashed a gang of 16 robbers believed to be responsible for nearly 50 burglaries with a total haul worth hundreds of thousands of euros. The gang is suspected of having broken into 15 homes, 19 cars and 14 company offices recently, according to a police source. “It is one of the largest Albanian gangs that have been operating in the country,” the source added. Authorities have arrested five of the total number of suspects, all aged between 15 and 30, and are searching for the remaining gang members. No information was...

SETH J. FRANTZMAN On a pleasant Thursday in December 1948, Emilio Traubner, a correspondent for The Palestine Post, found himself near Abu Kabir, not far from Jaffa. Trenches and expended cartridges were strewn about, reminders of the fighting between units of the Irgun and local Arab forces that had taken place there seven months previously. There was a large Arab villa from where Traubner recovered a diary. It turned out to be the daily record of Yusuf Begovic of Pale, a town near Sarajevo in modern-day Bosnia-Herzegovina. In it Begovic had described his activities as a cook for the “Arab...

Since yesterday, the Macedonian police is in action at various locations in Skopje, due to the tip it received for suspicious money transfer. Our sources confirm, a Macedonian bank had tipped off the Authorities since January 2007 of suspicious money transfers. An Albanian, Bekir Halimi has been receiving 2,115 euros payments from Kuwaiti Organization "Revival Islamic Heritage Society". "The Revival Islamic Heritage Society has been blacklisted by the United Nations because of their close ties to terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda", said Interior Ministry's spokesperson, Ivo Kotevski. The money transfer through a swift account was done via Kuwaiti and two...

BELGRADE, May 9 (Itar-Tass) -- The Serbian government has unanimously approved the oil and gas agreement with Russia and recommended the parliament to ratify it, the government press office said on Friday. The agreement will now be submitted for ratification to the new parliament, as the current parliament is dismissed to order of the national president. A protocol to the Serbian-Russian Intergovernmental Agreement on Oil and Gas Cooperation says that the agreement must be ratified by May 25. Russia has done that, and the delayed ratification in Serbia, which was caused by the breakdown of the ruling coalition, is immaterial....

VITEZ -- Six Bosnia-Herzegovina flags were set on fire in Vitez, a Croatian town in the Muslim-Croat Federation. The flags were displayed in Vitez for the first time after 13 years, reports said. The incident took place over the weekend, and local police said several persons took part. One suspect has been detained, while another "ran to Croatia", the police explained. The flags were displayed to mark April 28, the day of the municipality.

A GROUP of doormen stamped and kicked a man to death after refusing him entry into a club for looking too young, a court heard on Monday. Lee Rayner, 30, of Franklin Road, Hornchurch, who was due to get married, was beaten and trampled as he lay helpless on the ground following a confrontation with doormen at the Opium Lounge in North Street, Romford, on June 16 last year. The blows were so savage his skull was almost fractured in half and he later died from brain damage. Doormen Johnives Kalu, 23, and Albanian Rustem Geca, 24, are standing trial...

By NEBI QENA – 14 hours ago PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Police stopped a car carrying weapons and ammunition from Kosovo toward Macedonia on Monday and arrested four Kosovo Albanians, authorities said. The weapons, which were given to NATO-led peacekeepers responsible for securing Kosovo's borders, apparently were intended for extremists in neighboring Macedonia, police said. The cargo contained high-caliber weapons and ammunition, including rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and anti-aircraft machine guns, police said. Kosovo and Macedonia have formed working groups to try to settle a border dispute concerning about 5,000 acres of land given to Macedonia in a 2001 border...

26 April 2008 | 00:38 | FOCUS News Agency The Hague. The international court for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia said Friday it had charged a Kosovar minister for bullying a witness in the controversial trial of one of Kosovo's former leaders, AFP reported. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) charged Culture Minister Astrit Araqija with contempt of court, along with his adviser Bajrush Morina. The two were members of war crimes suspect and former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj's defence team. The charge dates to January 8 but was only made public on Friday. Charges against...

24 April 2008 A MAN who battered a bus driver with a wooden mallet when he was asked to pay his fare, was jailed on Thursday. Erjon Demuqaj, 19, launched a ferocious attack and rained down blows on Amandeep Virdee after refusing to pay for a ticket in London Road, Barking. Snaresbrook Crown Court heard how Mr Virdee, 30, was gashed on his hand and had a thumbnail ripped off as he tried to shield himself from the raging thug. When police arrived, Demuqaj, who fled war-torn Kosovo 10 years ago as a child refugee, blamed the bus driver, saying...