UN Court

A referendum will be held in the Serb Republic (RS) in Bosnia-Herzegovina on the Bosnian Constitutional Court's decision regarding the marking of RS Day.

The court last week ruled that the day, January 9, cannot be a state holiday because it is also a Serbian Orthodox feast and patron saint day (slava).

Leaders of all Republika Srpska's main political parties agreed on Sunday to ask the Bosnian Serb National Assembly to initiate a referendum asking people if they support the recent decision by the Constitutional Court to abolish the annual Republic Day holiday celebrating the entity's foundation.

The prison sentence of a man who violently abused his wife for six years and recently injured her with a firearm has been delayed and lessened by an Istanbul court due to his positive "stance," though he didn't appear at the first court hearing.

A husband and wife in the Aegean Turkish province of ?zmir suspected of selling bootleg alcohol that killed three people were arrested Nov. 26, while one survivor said he would continue to drink counterfeit products, since legal alcohol was too expensive. 

Domestic and international press institutions and political figures have condemned the Nov. 26 arrest of daily Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dündar and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gül for their news report on Syria-bound intelligence trucks.

Turkey's left-wing opposition has strongly condemned the arrest of two prominent journalists on charges of assisting terrorists, with the leaders of both the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) arguing the "unlawful" decision was personally imposed by President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an.

Cumhuriyet Editor-in-Chief Can Dündar and the daily's Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gül, were arrested due to stories published about Turkish intelligence trucks bound for Syria in early 2014, on Nov. 26 in Istanbul.

A group of 60 businessmen attending a business fair in Krasnodar were detained by Russian authorities, as Hurriyet newspaper reports.,

Russian authorities detained them because they attended the business fair on tourist visas.

A group of Turkish businessmen are said to have been detained by the Russian authorities for making "false statements about their trip to the country," amid rising tension between Ankara and Moscow over the downing of a Russian jet by Turkish F-16s near the Syrian border on Nov. 24.

An Istanbul prosecutor has demanded up to eight years and two months in jail for Today's Zaman's editor-in-chief, Bülent Kene?, for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an on social media and in his statements. 

The indictment was prepared upon complaints by the lawyers representing the president.