News archive of August 2016

Five people on board a Russian military helicopter were killed Aug. 1, when it was shot down over Syria, in the single deadliest incident for Moscow since it intervened in the Syrian Civil War.

The attack came as Syrian opposition fighters and their jihadist allies battled government forces outside Aleppo in a bid to ease the regime's siege of rebel-held parts of the northern city.

Marko Djuric will be heading Belgrade's delegation in the continuing expert-level dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday.

Djuric is the director of the Serbian Government Office for Kosovo and Metohija.

At least 80 skeletons lie in a mass grave in an ancient Greek cemetery, their wrists clamped by iron shackles.

They are the victims, say archaeologists, of a mass execution. But who they were, how they got there and why they appear to have been buried with a measure of respect - that all remains a mystery.

An arbitration tribunal in London has dismissed Turkish holding company Çukurova's claims against Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman's investment vehicle Letter One, Fridman's company said Aug. 1, representing a potential breakthrough in a decade-long ownership battle over mobile phone company Turkcell, Reuters has reported. 

Bulgaria's Justice Ministry has said it has not received extradition requests from Turkey after the failed coup attempt in the country.

The statement from the ministry follows remarks by Turkey's top diplomat, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who on Sunday said the country would demand the extradition of a person allegely linked to US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen.

A petty military official with Turkey's Gendarmerie has described in his testimony to prosecutors in the southeastern province of Hakkari his links to the Fethullah Terrorist Organization (FETÖ), giving an account of the way the group recruits boys and young men to serve its goals.

Serbia's Novak Djokovic, the current world number one in men's tennis, has won his 30th career Masters title.

Djokovic defeated Kei Nishikori of Japan 6-3, 7-5 in Sunday's final of the Rogers Cup in Toronto.

The dismissals of two former staff sergeants after a probe carried out into uncorroborated allegations that they were "having group sex and drinking alcohol" in 2012 have revealed the extent of the outlawed Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ) members' powerful and organized nesting inside the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), which is now planned to go through a major civil overhaul. 

As President of AIESEC in Slovenia (AIESEC is the world's largest youth-run organisation represented in over 125 countries), I have seen the importance of English as a global and mutual language. Living in today's world, international connections are more important than ever and the ability to speak one of the global languages is a key to success.

Government ministers attended the inauguration of a statue of Miro Baresic, who killed a Yugoslav ambassador in 1971 and died fighting in the Croatian war for independence 20 years later.