Archive for the month of November 2008

Germany acknowledged three detained in Kosovo are agents

28 Nov, 2008 Balkanblog

Thomas Oppermann, chairman of Germany's parliamentary committee overseeing intelligence operations, told reporters that his government had informed the committee that the three Germans arrested November 20 were working for Germany's BND intelligence agency in Kosovo. He said there was no indication the three had any involvement in the November 14 attack on the EU office.

Earlier, a Pristina judge had ordered the three to remain detained until December 22. The Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported that the three were to be released today for lack of evidence.

Kosovo police said a group calling itself "Army of the Republic of Kosovo" sent email messages to the media claiming responsibility for the attack and warned of further attacks against international officials and the Serb minority in Kosovo.

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Office 2007: save as PDF / XPS

27 Nov, 2008 Stephan

For those of you still struggling to create PDF files from Office 2007, download and install the Microsoft add-in for Office 2007 Save as PDF or XPS. The whole process is painless and it allows documents from most Office 2007 applications to be saved as PDF.

Office 2007 add-in

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UN Security Council unanimously backs Secretary-General

27 Nov, 2008 Balkanblog

The UN Security Council unanimously backed Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the deployment of the EULEX mission. The council said it "welcomes the cooperation between the UN and other international actors, within the framework of Security Council resolution 1244". The statement made no reference to Kosovo's status.

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UN expects EULEX can deploy early December

26 Nov, 2008 Balkanblog

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he had instructed UN staff to prepare to hand over to the EU. Kosovo refuses to accept provisions which would keep its majority-Serb areas under UN auspices because it fears this could lead to partition. Despite this objection, Kosovo indicated it would cooperate.

EULEX is scheduled to deploy in December.

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Serbia and Kosovo agree to cooperate with EULEX

24 Nov, 2008 Balkanblog

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that Serbia and Kosovo will cooperate with the EULEX rule of law mission. He said Kosovo rejected his EULEX deployment plan, while Serbia accepted it, but he indicated Kosovo was willing to cooperate.

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Three arrested in Kosovo are German federal agents

22 Nov, 2008 Balkanblog

Der Spiegel reported that the three Germans that were arrested in Pristina in relation to the attack on the International Civilian Office, were actually members of the Bundesnachrichtendienste (federal intelligence service). The Germans stated that they were investigating the scene but were not involved. Der Spiegel said the three agents had not officially been registered with the authorities in Kosovo.

Drei BND-Agenten im Kosovo festgenommen Der Spiegel, November 22, 2008
Translation by Google
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Bosnia peacekeeping force extended

20 Nov, 2008 Balkanblog

The UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend the European Union's peacekeeping force in Bosnia for a year. NATO decided to continue to maintain a headquarters in Bosnia.

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Serbia to file counter suit against Croatia

20 Nov, 2008 Balkanblog

After the International Court of Justice decided November 19 it would hear the case of Croatia against Serbia, the Serbian government said it would file a counter suit against Croatia over alleged genocide committed against Serbs during the war in the 1990s.

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ICJ allows Croatia's case against Serbia to proceed

19 Nov, 2008 Balkanblog

The International Court of Justice ruled that it has jurisdiction to examine Croatia’s accusation that Serbia committed genocide (in the Knin region, and in eastern and western Slavonia and Dalmatia) in the 1991-95 war. Croatian sources say that 20,000 Croatians died in the conflict.

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Ubuntu 8.10 gripes

18 Nov, 2008 Stephan

Now that I have been working with Ubuntu 8.10 for a while, I still cannot say this is an operating system suitable for novices.

After a fresh install of 8.10, I noticed that Firefox was not working properly. None of the toolbars seemed right and icons were missing. As it turns out, the extension Ubuntu Firefox Modifications 0.6 is installed by default. Disabling this extension and restarting Firefox fixed the problem.

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