News stories by Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jul 03 (IPS) - The 100-year anniversary of World War I (1914-18) may have come and gone, but the role of Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip – the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand – remains controversial in the turbulent history of the Balkans. For some he was a terrorist, for others a hero.

BELGRADE, Jun 02 (IPS) - Waters have receded in Serbia after the worst flooding the country has seen in 120 years, and something new has surfaced, apart from devastated fields and property – censorship of the internet.

BELGRADE, May 21 (IPS) - The Balkans region is living one of its most horrible springs ever, after the worst flooding in 120 years took 47 lives and witnessed evacuation of dozens of thousands of Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs in a matter of days last week. 

BELGRADE, Feb 22 (IPS) - Thousands of people have rallied in streets of major Bosnian cities since last week, demanding social justice, decent living conditions and resignation of top officials who they openly blame for unprecedented poverty and the country's economic decline.

BELGRADE, Feb 03 (IPS) - One of the best kept secrets of former Yugoslavia is out in the open after the online release of the names of 16,101 inmates of Goli Otok, or the Naked Island, the country's only gulag – a Soviet system of forced labour camps – created 65 years ago.

BELGRADE, Dic 12 (IPS) - In the early morning hours, as hundreds of people grab their breakfast at a busy bakery in Beogradska Street in the Serbian capital, a very special basket quickly fills up with croissants, rolls and breads. It is the ‘solidarity basket'.

BELGRADE, Sep 16 (IPS) - This year, summer in the Balkans has been nice and warm, leaving behind a land of plenty, and enough food on the table. Except that people are talking about tomatoes "that don't taste as they used to," watermelons that are too watery, cabbages that are hard to slice through and onions that do not sting your eyes.

BELGRADE, Aug 02 (IPS) - This holy month of Ramadan comes with a difference for some families in the Balkans. It is the first without their young sons, husbands or brothers who died far away from home fighting in Syria.

BELGRADE, Jul 02 (IPS) - The global economic crisis has not hit Serbia for the first time, but this year it has bitten into Serbian culture. State subsidies for theatres, festivals, films and exhibitions have almost hit the bottom. State support for films is down to zero.

BELGRADE, May 16 (IPS) - The influential Serbian Orthodox Church publicly crossed a line recently when two of its top clergymen took part in a Belgrade rally with messages amounting to direct threats against the lives of government officials.