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Muslims in Syria crucified two Christian teenagers for refusing to convert to Islam. The story was reported on a Croatian Catholic website. According to Sister Raghida, former head of the Christian school in Damascus, the Muslims came to the two youths and said: So you want to die as a teacher in whom you trust? Please choose: either to renounce ( faith ) or you will be crucified! One of them was crucified in front of his father, who was afterwards killed. The jihadists entered the city of Maaloula and started killing men, women, and children. They did not just...

JASENOVAC -- A commemoration marking the 69th anniversary of the breakout of prisoners of the Ustasha death camp Jasenovac was held on Sunday [May 4, 2014.](Beta/Hina) Attending the event, Croatian President Ivo Josipović said genocide had occurred at that location and that it should never be forgotten. Josipović called on everyone to protect the memory of the people who had died in that camp, a place that would remain in collective memory forever, the Croatian electronic media reported. "Evil should be called by its real name, opposed and denied any opportunity to happen ever again," he stated. Evil is not...

On April 22, 1945, a group of surviving inmates broke out of Nazi Croatia’s main death camp, Jasenovac. Just fifty years later, their memories – and the grisly history of Jasenovac – had become prey to politics, propaganda, and historical revisionism more concerned with the 1990s Yugoslav wars than with the truth about “Independent Croatia” and its factory of death. South Gate of Jasenovac III “Brickworks” camp; (via Donja Gradina Memorial Association) On April 10, 1941, four days after armies of the German Reich and their allies attacked the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Croat nationalists (Ustasha) allied with Hitler and Mussolini...

MLAKA -- Patriarch Irinej of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) on Tuesday held a memorial service in Mlaka near Jasenovac, the site of Croatia's WW2 death camp.(Photo: Tanjug, file) April 22 is the anniversary of the Jasenovac breakthrough staged by the camp's prisoners. The day is also marked in Serbia as Holocaust Remembrance Day. After liturgy services lead by Patriarch Irinej, Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral and Bishop Jovan of Lipljan and other clerical dignitaries, a commemoration was held to honor the Jasenovac victims. "The church in Mlaka is built on the land of the sufferers where hundreds...

Could the Balkans, rather than previously accepted areas such as the Strait of Gibralter, have been the entry point for the first men in Europe? ORESHETZ, Bulgaria (AFP) - A team of 20 Bulgarian and French archeologists are trying to prove this theory after 11 years of excavation and research in the Kozarnika cave in northwestern Bulgaria. The digging up at this mountainous site of traces of human activity dating back 1.4 to 1.6 million years throws into question theories about when and where man first set foot in Europe. According to current theories, the Europeans' prehistoric ancestors came into...

Representatives of the OSCE tried to drive away in Kharkiv. Dozens of pro-Russian activists demanded that the monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe did not intervene in the situation in Ukraine. Protesters called for even begin work. Required the guests to leave Ukraine because they, in their opinion, biased . We recall that yesterday came to Kharkov observers. ***OSCE observers, headed by the Chairman of the monitoring mission in Ukraine Ambassador Adam Koberatsky arrived in Kharkov. The members of the mission will conduct monitoring of the social and political developments in the region and ways...

Eighteen countries, including five of the world’s leading arms exporters, ratified a landmark treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade on Wednesday, giving a significant boost to the campaign for the treaty’s entry into force. […] Five of the world’s top 10 arms exporters—Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain—turned in their ratification documents at the ceremony. The other 13 were Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Among the hold-outs is the United States, the world’s largest weapons exporter. The Obama administration has signed the treaty but there is strong resistance in...

Voting begins Sunday on a referendum on whether Venice and its surrounding region should secede from the rest of Italy, in an attempt to restore its 1,000-year history as a sovereign republic. La Serenissima — or the Most Serene Republic of Venice — was an independent trading power for a millennium before its last leader was deposed by Napoleon in 1797.

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Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, born Garik Kimovich Weinstein, the head of a pro-democracy group in his native Russia, was granted Croatian citizenship. Kasparov reportedly became a Croatian citizen last week after applying for citizenship in early February. He owns a home in Croatia and speaks the language, according to reports. The founder and chairman of United Civil Front is a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kasparov was arrested and beaten by police in 2012, and spent several days in jail, according to The Guardian newspaper. Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/ex-russian-chess-champ-kasparov-granted-croatian-citizenship/2014/03/02/

The European Union said on Sunday it has postponed negotiations with Switzerland on its participation in multibillion-dollar research and educational schemes in the latest fallout from a shock Swiss vote in favor of immigration curbs. The decision follows Switzerland’s announcement that the result of last week’s referendum on immigration means that it will not be able to sign a labor market pact with new EU member Croatia on July 1 as planned. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has warned that the narrow Swiss vote to restore quotas for migrants from the EU in breach of an accord with Brussels,...

ZAGREB - Alen Budaj, an associate of the Jerusalem-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, has said that the coutries that are legal successors to the former Yugoslavia, Serbia in particular, must send a strong diplomatic protest to the Vatican over its intention declare Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac a saint. The Vatican has officially confirmed that Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac will soon be declared a saint. Immediately upon the entering of the Germans in Zagreb, on April 10, 1941, Stepinac supported the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (ISC), which was declared a state by the Ustasha (Croatian fascist movement), and in 1945, he...

Sensational confession of Ibran Mustafic, Bosnian Muslim war veteran and politician: "We were killing our own people in Srebrenica."At least 1,000 Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica were killed by their compatriots during the breakthrough to Tuzla in July 1995, because there were lists of those who ” have to be prevented from reaching the freedom,at any cost” said one of the founders of the SDA in Srebrenica, Ibran Mustafic. ** Ibran Mustafic is the author of the book “Planned Chaos” whereas some of the crimes committed by soldiers of the (Muslim) Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Serbs are for the...

In Hungary, Croatia, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, a pro-family, pro-life revolution and a rediscovery of Christian roots is occurring. While few in the American media have noticed, this trend should challenge those who simply lament Europe’s moral malaise. Unnoticed in the shadow of a secularized west, religion’s public role has been growing in the east since the collapse of communism. Since taking power in 2010, Prime Minister Viktor Orban—a charismatic veteran of Hungary’s anti-Communist underground—has victoriously stood at the forefront of what Americans call the culture wars. In 2011, Orban’s government ratified a new constitution that defines marriage as...

Welfare spending in Britain has increased faster than almost any other country in Europe since 2000, new figures show. The cost of unemployment benefits, housing support and pensions as share of the economy has increased by more than a quarter over the past thirteen years – growing at a faster rate than in most of the developed world. Spending has gone up from 18.6 per cent of GDP to 23.7 per cent of GDP – an increase of 27 per cent, according to figures from the OECD, the club of most developed nations. By contrast, the average increase in welfare...

French authorities have filed preliminary charges against Bob Dylan over a 2012 interview in which he is quoted comparing Croatians to Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. The charges of “public insult and inciting hate” were filed against the musician in mid-November, Paris prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said Tuesday. They stem from a lawsuit by a Croatian community group in France over remarks in an interview in Rolling Stone magazine in September 2012. …

ZAGREB: A majority of Croatians voted in a referendum Sunday to ban gay marriages in what is a major victory for the Catholic Church-backed conservatives in the European Union´s newest nation. The state electoral commission, citing near complete results, said 65 percent of those who voted answered "yes" to the referendum question: "Do you agree that marriage is matrimony between a man and a woman?" About 34 percent voted against. The result meant that Croatia´s constitution will be amended to ban same-sex marriage. The vote has deeply divided Croatia. Liberal groups have said the referendum´s question infringes on basic human...

Zagreb (AFP) - Voters in staunchly Catholic Croatia cast ballots on Sunday in a controversial referendum whose results are expected to outlaw same-sex marriage in the European Union's newest member state. Some 3.8 million eligible voters were to decide on whether to amend the country's constitution to include a definition of marriage as a "union between a woman and a man". The current constitution does not define marriage. Passions have run high in Croatia ahead of the vote, with the Church-backed 'yes' camp citing the defence of traditional family values, and their opponents accusing them of discrimination against gays. Despite...

AFTER 40 years of hesitation and seven hard years of reform and lobbying, Turkey is basking today in the most qualified of invitations to begin the process of joining Europe - a continent whose eastern half the Ottoman empire controlled for centuries. A European Commission report released yesterday, which paves the way for a deciding vote by the 25-member European Union at its December summit, was heavily qualified, and Turkish leaders were muted in their expressions of delight at their initial success. Presenting the decision to the European parliament last night, commission president Romano Prodi said it was a "qualified...

ZAGREB, Croatia -- Croatia's World Cup qualification celebrations have been marred by apparent pro-Nazi chants by fans and defender Joe Simunic. Croatia qualified for the World Cup with a 2-0 win over Iceland on Tuesday. Video footage appears to show Simunic taking a microphone to the field after the match and shouting"For the homeland!" ["Za dom spremni!"] to the fans. The fans respond: "Ready!" That was the war call used by Ustashas, the Croatian pro-Nazi puppet regime that ruled the state during World War II when tens of thousands Jews, Serbs and others perished in concentration camps. The Australian-born Simunic...