Belgrade braces for another anti-government protest, calling for an early parliamentary election
Tensions have soared ahead of the protest organized by Serbia's university students, a key force behind nationwide anti-corruption demonstrations that started after a renovated rail station canopy collapsed, killing 16 people on Nov. 1.
Many blamed the concrete roof crash on rampant government corruption and negligence in state infrastructure projects, leading to recurring mass protests.
Vucic and his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party have refused the demand for an early vote and accused protesters of planning to spur violence at orders from abroad, which they didn't specify.
In a show of business as usual, the Serbian president handed out presidential awards in the capital to people, including artists and journalists, he deemed worthy, as his loyalists, camping in a park in central Belgrade, announced they would hold a 'literary evening.'
'People need not worry — the state will be defended and thugs brought to justice," Vucic told reporters on Saturday.
Serbian presidential and parliamentary elections are due in 2027.
Saturday marks St. Vitus Day, a religious holiday and the date when Serbs mark a 14th-century battle against Ottoman Turks in Kosovo that was the start of hundreds of years of Turkish rule, holding symbolic importance.
Police earlier this week arrested several people accused of allegedly plotting to overthrow the government and banned entry into the country to several people from Croatia and a theatre director from Montenegro without explanation. Serbia's railway company halted train service over an alleged bomb threat in what critics said was an apparent bid to prevent people from traveling to Belgrade for the rally.
Authorities made similar moves back in March, ahead of what was the biggest ever anti-government protest in the Balkan country, which drew hundreds of thousands of people.
Vucic's loyalists then set up a camp in a park outside his office, which still stands. The otherwise peaceful gathering on March 15 came to an abrupt end when part of the crowd suddenly scattered in panic, triggering allegations that authorities used a sonic weapon against peaceful protesters, which they have denied.
Vucic, a former extreme nationalist, has become increasingly authoritarian since coming to power over a decade ago. Though he formally says he wants Serbia to join the European Union, critics say Vucic has stifled democratic freedoms as he strengthened ties with Russia and China.
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Los Angeles Times
36 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
South Korea dismantles its propaganda loudspeakers on the border with North Korea
SEOUL — South Korea has begun dismantling loudspeakers that blare anti-North Korean propaganda across the border, as President Lee Jae Myung's liberal administration seeks to mend fractured relations with Pyongyang. In a statement, a spokesperson for the defense ministry said the removal was 'a practical measure to ease inter-Korean tensions without impacting the military's readiness posture.' The move follows the suspension of propaganda broadcasts in June on orders from Lee, an advocate of reconciliation who has framed warmer relations with North Korea as a matter of economic benefit — a way to minimize a geopolitical liability long blamed for South Korea's stock market being undervalued. 'Strengthening peace in the border regions will help ease tensions across all of South Korea, and increasing dialogue and exchange will improve the economic situation,' Lee said at a news conference last month. First used by North Korea in 1962, with South Korea following suit a year later, propaganda loudspeakers have long been a defining feature of the hot-and-cold relationship between Seoul and Pyongyang, switched on and off with the waxing and waning of goodwill. The last major stoppage was during a period of detente in 2004 and lasted until 2015, when two South Korean soldiers stationed by the border were maimed by landmines that military officials said had been covertly installed by North Korean soldiers weeks earlier. Played by loudspeakers set up in the DMZ, or demilitarized zone, a 2.5 mile-wide stretch of land between the two countries, South Korea's broadcasts once featured live singing and propagandizing by soldiers stationed along the border. In recent years, however, the speakers have played pre-planned programming that ranges from outright opprobrium to more subtle messaging intended to imbue listeners with pro-South Korea sympathies. The programming has included K-pop songs with lyrics that double as invitations to defect to South Korea, such as one 2010 love song that goes: 'come on, come on, don't turn me down and come on and approach me,' or weather reports whose power lies in their accuracy — and have occasionally been accompanied by messages like 'it's going to rain this afternoon so make sure you take your laundry in.' With a maximum range of around 19 miles that makes them unlikely to reach major population centers in North Korea, the effectiveness of such broadcasts has come under question by some experts. Still, several North Korean defectors have cited the broadcasts as part of the reason they decided to flee to South Korea. One former artillery officer who defected in 2013 recalled being won over, in part, by the weather reports. 'Whenever the South Korean broadcast said it would rain from this time to that time, it would always actually rain,' he told South Korean media last year. North Korea, however, sees the broadcasts as a provocation and has frequently threatened to retaliate with military action. In 2015, Pyongyang made good on this threat by firing a rocket at a South Korean loudspeaker, leading to an exchange of artillery fire between the two militaries. Such sensitivities have made the loudspeakers controversial in South Korea, too, with residents of the border villages complaining about the noise, as well as the dangers of military skirmishes breaking out near their homes. 'At night, [North Korea] plays frightening noises like the sound of animals, babies or women crying,' one such resident told President Lee when he visited her village in June, shortly after both sides halted the broadcasts. 'It made me ill. Even sleeping pills didn't work.' But it is doubtful that the dismantling alone will be enough for a diplomatic breakthrough. Relations between Seoul and Pyongyang have been in a deep chill following the failure of the denuclearization summits between Trump and Kim Jong Un in 2018, as well as a separate dialogue between Kim and then-South Korean president Moon Jae-in. Tensions rose further during the subsequent conservative administration of Yoon Suk Yeol, who was president of South Korea from 2022 until his removal from office earlier this year. Yoon is currently being investigated by a special counsel on allegations that he ordered South Korean military drones to fly over Pyongyang last October. Ruling party lawmakers have alleged that the move was intended to provoke a war with North Korea, and in doing so, secure the legal justification for Yoon's declaration of martial law in December. During Yoon's term, Kim Jong Un formally foreswore any reconciliation with Seoul while expanding his nuclear weapons program. That stance remains unchanged even under the more pro-reconciliation Lee, according to a statement by Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader's younger sister, published by state news agency KCNA last month. 'No matter how desperately the Lee Jae Myung government may try to imitate the fellow countrymen and pretend they do all sorts of righteous things to attract our attention, they can not turn back the hands of the clock of the history which has radically changed the character of the DPRK-ROK relations,' she said.
Boston Globe
36 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Russia says it no longer will abide by its self-imposed moratorium on intermediate-range missiles
Advertisement It didn't say what specific moves the Kremlin might take, but President Vladimir Putin has previously announced that Moscow was planning to deploy its new Oreshnik missiles on the territory of its neighbor and ally Belarus later this year. 'Decisions on specific parameters of response measures will be made by the leadership of the Russian Federation based on an interdepartmental analysis of the scale of deployment of American and other Western land-based intermediate-range missiles, as well as the development of the overall situation in the area of international security and strategic stability,' the Foreign Ministry said. The Russian statement follows President Trump's announcement Friday that he's ordering the repositioning of two US nuclear submarines 'based on the highly provocative statements' of Dmitry Medvedev, who was president in 2008-12 to allow Putin, bound by term limits, to later return to the office. Trump's statement came as his deadline for the Kremlin to reach a peace deal in Ukraine approaches later this week. Advertisement Trump said he was alarmed by Medvedev's attitude. Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council chaired by Putin, has apparently sought to curry favor with his mentor by making provocative statements and frequently lobbing nuclear threats. Last week. he responded to Trump's deadline for Russia to accept a peace deal in Ukraine or face sanctions by warning him against 'playing the ultimatum game with Russia' and declaring that 'each new ultimatum is a threat and a step toward war.' Medvedev also commented on the Foreign Ministry's statement, describing Moscow's withdrawal from the moratorium as 'the result of NATO countries' anti-Russian policy.' 'This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with,' he wrote on X. 'Expect further steps.' Intermediate-range missiles can fly between 310 to 3,400 miles. Such land-based weapons were banned under the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Washington and Moscow abandoned the pact in 2019, accusing each other of violations, but Moscow declared its self-imposed moratorium on their deployment until the US makes such a move. The collapse of the INF Treaty has stoked fears of a replay of a Cold War-era European missile crisis, when the US and the Soviet Union both deployed intermediate-range missiles on the continent in the 1980s. Such weapons are seen as particularly destabilizing because they take less time to reach targets, compared with intercontinental ballistic missiles, leaving no time for decision-makers and raising the likelihood of a global nuclear conflict over a false launch warning. Advertisement Russia's missile forces chief has declared that the new Oreshnik intermediate range missile, which Russia first used against Ukraine in November, has a range to reach all of Europe. Oreshnik can carry conventional or nuclear warheads. Putin has praised the Oreshnik's capabilities, saying its multiple warheads that plunge to a target at speeds up to Mach 10 are immune to being intercepted and are so powerful that the use of several of them in one conventional strike could be as devastating as a nuclear attack. Putin has warned the West that Moscow could use it against Ukraine's NATO allies who allowed Kyiv to use their longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia.
USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
Trump praises Sydney Sweeney ad, but does he know American Eagle is super WOKE?
Sydney Sweeney may be a registered Republican, but I have discovered that American Eagle Outfitters, Inc. is – and it pains me to write this – incredibly, unconscionably woke. President Donald Trump took time away from making America great again to praise the recent American Eagle jeans ad starring Sydney Sweeney, hailing it for not being 'WOKE.' But I have an urgent message for President Trump: SIR, YOU HAVE FALLEN INTO A WOKENESS TRAP THAT I ASSUME WAS SET BY RADICAL LEFTISTS! If you're a patriotic MAGA supporter like me who has been applauding the company for triggering the libs with its Sweeney ad, which features the 'Euphoria' star talking about having 'good jeans,' you might want to sit down. I have discovered that American Eagle Outfitters, Inc. is – and it pains me to write this – incredibly, unconscionably woke. American Eagle used the Sydney Sweeney ad to lure Trump into a woke trap! The company clearly tried to avoid wokeness detection by avoiding the usual red-flag DEI and instead calling its anti-American policy 'IDEA,' which stands for 'Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Access.' AEO's corporate website is riddled with wildly liberal ideas like this: 'Difference and individuality make AEO stronger, higher-performing and more innovative.' Opinion: MAGA is realizing Trump lies. How can they trust anything he says on Epstein? There are sentences like this that absolutely reek of the kind of inclusivity President Trump and his administration have been working so hard to defeat: 'A sense of belonging is critical for associates to bring their whole, authentic selves to work.' Authentic selves? Where am I, in some blue-state coffee shop surrounded by communist libs talking about their feelings? MAGA world has rallied around Sweeney and American Eagle Given the way my fellow MAGA Republicans reacted to the Sweeney blue-jeans ad, I thought American Eagle was a company I could support. The sensible right saw a few people on the left claiming that the 'good jeans' ad was messaging that a blond, blue-eyed white woman was genetically superior. So everyone from Fox News to Vice President JD Vance got their dander up and slammed the leftist ninnies. 'So you have a pretty girl doing a jeans ad and they can't help but freak out,' Vance said on a podcast recently. 'It reveals a lot more about them than it does us.' Right on! It was clear, at that point, that all reasonable Republicans should wear American Eagle jeans to prove their Americanness. That's why I went out and bought 20 pairs of them, confident that they would protect the bottom half of my body from wokeness. Trump praises 'Republican' Sweeney and says her jeans ad is 'HOTTEST' Then, on Aug. 4, the man himself, President Donald J. Trump, took to Truth Social to hail Sweeney as 'a registered Republican' who 'has the 'HOTTEST' ad out there.' His post concluded with: 'Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be.' BOOM! To celebrate, I put a second pair of American Eagle jeans on over the pair I was already wearing. Opinion: Trump is unpopular, polls show, and he's building an America most Americans hate Everything seemed perfect until I learned the truth about AEO. Turns out American Eagle is as woke as the rest of the lefties I saw that the company celebrated – gulp – Pride Month. I found the company's nefarious IDEA policy. I came across a 2022 AEO post that read: 'At AEO, we celebrate the diversity of one through the inclusion of many. Throughout the month of June, we will be celebrating associates who are members of the LGBTQIA+ community – highlighting their accomplishments, learning about their unique roles and hearing about their experience at AEO!' My two pairs of jeans almost fell off. When I saw an AEO brand talking about 'systemic racism,' my jeans fell off And then I found that back in 2020, the month after George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, one of AEO's brands, Aerie, posted, 'We stand with the Black community,' writing that 'THE LIVES OF ALL BLACK PEOPLE MATTER' and that 'the more we understand systemic racism the more we can take action.' I referred to the MAGA-branded WOKE-to-English dictionary that I wrote and sell on Etsy, and sure enough, that's woke. Those monsters at American Eagle clearly recruited Sweeney, an innocent Republican, and used her to lure President Trump, Fox News and the entire MAGA movement into supporting a company that is, pardon my language, WOKE AF!! It's like we can't trust corporations to be honest about anything I guess I can take a little comfort knowing this also swings back at the handful of libs who got riled up about the Sweeney ad in the first place and condemned American Eagle as right-wing eugenicists. It's almost as if corporations insincerely play both sides of the fence, benefit from controversy of any sort and don't really have any strong beliefs outside of making money. Didn't see that coming. Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @ and on Facebook at
