Europe Archives

RIGHTS-YUGOSLAVIA: Want to be Warm? Get Rid of Milosevic

While Yugoslav customs keep delaying a European Union (EU) heating-oil shipment for two opposition-controlled- Serbian cities, a number of people here feel they are again being unfairly punished by the democratic nations of Europe.

DRUGS-SPAIN: “Narco-Parlours” for Junkies

By IPS Correspondents

Illegal drugs like cocaine and heroin permeate the economic and social environment of Spain, where "narco-parlours" will be opened in the capital to provide a safe setting for junkies to shoot up, and to supply heroin to the most diehard addicts.

DEVELOPMENT: Rebuilding Kosovo at Developing Countries’ Expense

By IPS Correspondents

More than 900 non governmental organisations called the European Union (EU) to readjust its budget so that the reconstruction of Kosovo will not be paid by shrinking programmes in developing countries.

ENVIRONMENT: Russians Voice Alarm Over Nuclear Waste Dumping

By IPS Correspondents

Russia's Nuclear Power Ministry, or Minatom, is planning to earn billions of dollars by reprocessing and storing other countries' nuclear waste, promising to use two percent of the proceeds to clean up the resulting environmental mess.

RIGHTS – EUROPE: Cold War Winds Cool OSCE Summit in Turkey

By IPS Correspondents

Although the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) starts its Istanbul Summit Thursday in a totally different scenario from that of Helsinki 1975, when it was created, cold war-style frictions will not be absent.

ENVIRONMENT-UN: Anti-Desertification Experts Meet in Brazil

By IPS Correspondents

Fresh impulses to promote world-wide efforts aimed at combating desertification - particularly in Africa - are expected to emerge from a two-week global conference beginning next Monday (Nov 15) in Recife, Brazil, a United Nations official said.

RIGHTS-YUGOSLAVIA: Abuses and Information War Continue

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic

While the Russian chairman of the United Nations Security Council left Yugoslavia carrying a pile of human rights complaints, a UN forensic team said it had exhumed more than 2,100 corpses of ethnic Albanians from mass graves in Kosovo.

RIGHTS-CHECHNYA: Russians Determined to End War by December

By IPS Correspondents

Recent history seems to have taught Russia's military leadership that a humanitarian catastrophe may make embarrassing headlines for a few days, while determined action and a sweeping victory leave durable dividends.

POLITICS-YUGOSLAVIA: Montenegro Moves Towards Independence

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic

For all practical purposes, Montenegro took last week the first step towards independence by adopting the German mark as a parallel currency to the Yugoslav dinar.

RIGHTS-GERMANY: Child Spies – Little Known Victims of Cold War

By IPS Correspondents

Ten years after the fall of the Berlin wall, many young east Germans are nursing a terrible secret. They are the little-known child spies who betrayed their friends and acquaintances to the East German ministry for State Security, or Stasi.

EAST-WEST GERMANY: Ten Years Yearning for a Sanitised Past

By IPS Correspondents

Germans east and west can remember to this day what they were doing the day the wall came down on 9 November 1989.

RIGHTS-EUROPE: Children – Main Losers of Capitalist Revolution

By IPS Correspondents

Children in the former communist countries of central and eastern Europe are paying the heaviest toll for the market- oriented economic reforms launched since the fall of the Berlin Wall ten years ago, a Unicef report released here Thursday says.

RIGHTS-YUGOSLAVIA: Watching Your Neighbours

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic

It is just like in cold-war times, when Yugoslavia had enemies on both sides of the Berlin Wall and people were expected to watch out for foreign saboteurs.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/MUSIC-FILM: Dracula – From Horror Story to Romantic Melodrama

By IPS Correspondents

Avant-garde composer Philip Glass has created a new musical score to the universal 1931 film classic Dracula. This cinematic gem, starring the inimitable Bela Lugosi, set the standard for Gothic horror films for decades to come.

POLITICS: Vote in Ukraine and Georgia Leans to Continuity

By IPS Correspondents

Crucial elections held Sunday in two former Soviet states - Ukraine and Georgia - have been widely regarded as a referendum on economic reforms and pro-Western policies of the ruling elites, as opposed to closer ties with Russia.

LITERATURE-SPAIN: Rafael Alberti Has Departed, With Open Hands

By Tito Drago

Rafael Alberti, legendary Spanish poet, playwright, painter and politician of the left, the last of the "Generation of '27", set out on his journey to the infinite Thursday, with open hands as a sign of peace and human solidarity.

ENVIRONMENT-CLIMATE: Germany Leads Europe’s ‘Pusher’ Role

By IPS Correspondents

Germany - which has had a major impact on the European Union's environmental leadership role in the past seven years - is determined to play the "pusher" at the global climate change talks which began here Monday, analysts say.

POLITICS-ITALY: Andreotti Absolution Sparks Right-wing Backlash

By IPS Correspondents

Italy's political right-wing is trying to take advantage of the absolution of seven-time prime minister Giulio Andreotti, who had been charged with mafia ties, and turn the court decision around to demand an end to all legal proceedings against their own political representatives.