News stories by Vesna Peric Zimonjic, page 7

Prominent theatre actor Tanasije Uzunovic loves to take long walks in the large Kalemegdan Fortress Park but generally avoids the Dedinje neighbourhood, a more popular green zone in the Serbian capital.

Serbs can look forward to better prospects in the New Year, having scored two major diplomatic victories in recent weeks that may help integrate their country with Europe.

It is not often that anything in Serbia can bring several hundred thousand people together, but that is exactly what happened Thursday when the Patriarch Pavle, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), was buried in a monastery graveyard near Belgrade.

The postponement of the trial in the genocide cases in the 1992-95 Bosnia war is further indication that victims of war crimes may never get justice.

The Balkans gets its first museum on the Roma, to tell a story about one of the most underprivileged ethnic groups in the region.

Ultranationalist groups behind the violence in Belgrade last month face ban by the Constitutional Court of Serbia.

One in three women is ill-treated by someone or other in family homes, survey after survey shows. And so the total of three men living in shelter in a small home for battered husbands may seem unmentionably small in comparison.

A controversial new law on media came into force in Serbia Tuesday, raising fears that freedom of expression will now be restricted by censorship or self- censorship.

A very hot summer of workers' discontent has taken over Serbia. Some 33,000 people go on strike daily in 40 to 45 firms, according to union statistics. They are mostly employees of privatised companies who have not been paid salaries or social and health security benefits for months now.

The arms industry in Serbia is seeing record growth amidst the economic slum that has hit other industries.