Croatians

For three years, parishioners of a church in this gritty steel town have been fighting with their bishop, contending that their Croatian heritage is being undermined by the Catholic diocese's decision to consolidate parishes. They have picketed the home of Bishop Nicholas Dattilo of Harrisburg, carrying signs that read, "Save Our Parish, Save Your Soul." They have arranged for a Croatian bishop from Bosnia to celebrate Mass without Dattilo's permission.

Deep in a Croatian cave, scientists have discovered a tiny snail with a shell that looks as if it is made of glass. The Zospeum tholussum specimen was found more than half a mile beneath the Earth's surface, in the  Lukina Jama-Trojama cave system, one of the 20 deepest cave systems in the world.  The snail is minuscule -- just 1 millimeter across. It is part of a group of snails generally found along the drainage systems of caves. Like its Zospeum cousins , Zospeum tholussum has limited eyesight and mobility, according to researchers.  "Since they are grazing microorganisms from stones, mud and wood that has been washed into the cave, they have everything around that they need," said Alexander Weigand of Goethe-University in Frankfurt, Germany, who described the snail in the journal Subterranean Biology.

The Yugoslav leadership collapsed Friday after what amounted to a Serbian-led coup d'etat , leaving the crisis-torn country without a president or a forum to negotiate escape from a looming civil war. The power vacuum left open the possibility of a military takeover, moves by Croatia and Slovenia to secede, and uncontrollable outbreaks of violence between armed Serbs and Croats.

The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal on Friday overturned the convictions of two Croatian generals who led a 1995 assault against Serb-occupied territory, ruling that the trial court erred in judging the officers' action as an attack on civilians. Gens. Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac showed little emotion when the presiding judge of the appeals panel at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia read out the 3-2 decision to reverse their convictions for crimes against humanity and violations of the law of war. Crowds of supporters inside and outside the courtroom, however, erupted with cheers and applause.

The head of Yugoslavia's crippled federal presidency led a flotilla of 40 fishing and tour boats on a peace mission Wednesday to break the navy's monthlong blockade of Dubrovnik, Croatia's most cherished resort. The boats carrying President Stipe Mesic and Croatian Prime Minister Franjo Greguric planned to reach the walled city on the Adriatic to draw attention to the plight of 50,000 people trapped inside with little food and water.

Yugoslavia's civil war spilled over its borders into Hungary this weekend when thousands fled to escape the ethnic bloodletting, and Serbian-commanded air force jets violated Hungarian airspace en route to bombing Croatian targets. The flood of Yugoslav refugees across Hungary's southern border was the first major influx into a neighboring country since fighting between Serbs and Croats intensified in late June after Croatia and Slovenia declared independence.

Every day in San Pedro, in a large stucco hall filled with memories of good times, scores of Croatian-Americans gather to share sad stories about the war in their homeland. In the bright auditorium and the dimly lit lounge of Croatian Hall, they talk about what has happened to their republic and to loved ones such as Ante Rogic. Rogic was a 17-year-old soldier in Yugoslavia when the war began in July, said his cousin, Susy Smith of San Pedro.

A teen-ager was wounded as hundreds of ethnic Croatians demanding a homeland demonstrated outside the Yugoslav Consulate in Sydney, Australia. The 13-year-old victim, hit in the neck and throat, was listed in satisfactory condition. It is unclear whether the shots came from inside or outside the consulate. The incident occurred as 1,500 protesters demanding a Croatian homeland in Yugoslavia marked National Day, the anniversary of the Communist government in Belgrade.

Your reports about the divide between Serbs and the Muslim-Croat Federation in Bosnia deserve comment. Time and again, you (in common with most of the Western media) assert that Slobodan Milosevic was responsible for the breakup of the country. As one who has traveled widely throughout the region, it has been my impression that many people (Serbs, Croats and Muslims) agree that the European Union recognition of Croatia as an independent country--forced through by Germany--was the catalyst for war in the former Yugoslavia.

The Croatian parliament has passed a law forcing shops to close on Sundays in a concession to the Roman Catholic Church. The church has campaigned for years for Sundays to be devoted to family or Mass in Croatia, which is almost 90% Roman Catholic. But Croatians have begun spending weekends in shopping malls that have flourished across the country in the last few years and remain open seven days a week. The law takes effect Jan. 1. It allows Sunday shopping over the summer and Christmas holidays.

Karaoke Culture Dubravka Ugresic Open Letter: 324 pp., $15.95 paper Dubravka Ugresic does not like karaoke. That doesn't stop her from trying it, just as her resistance to celebrity doesn't stop her from putting her head through a cutout on a Hollywood studio tour so that she can be photographed with Clark Gable. Ugresic, a game and inquisitive critic, looks at culture from all angles, which sometimes means picking up the mic . Karaoke recycles rather than creates, she argues in "Karaoke Culture," the 100-page essay that lends its name to the title of her new collection.

Last May, Bayern Munich dipped into its coffers and handed VfB Stuttgart something north of $40 million for German national team forward Mario Gomez. In August, the Bavarian club again reached deep to come up with $33 million to acquire Dutch national winger Arjen van Robben from Real Madrid. And, in July, Croatian national team striker Ivica Olic quietly slipped in the door at Bayern's Allianz Arena and made himself right at home. On Tuesday, in a scintillating performance, Olic, 30, scored all three goals as Bayern Munich clinched its place in the May 22 European Champions League final with a 3-0 demolition of Olympique Lyon in France.

In the last year, Mario Ancic has been both a commerce lawyer in Zagreb, Croatia, and a tennis player. He prefers the outdoor courts to the indoor ones. Ancic, 25, who was a Wimbledon semifinalist in 2004, missed most of last year after being diagnosed with mononucleosis that had first been diagnosed as a bad flu in 2008. There was a time, Ancic said, when he would spit up blood while hitting a tennis ball because he didn't know what was wrong. On Thursday, Ancic beat American qualifier Bobby Reynolds, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, in the first round of the BNP Paribas Open at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, and he was ecstatic to have had the opportunity to play.

Pressure, pressure everywhere, nor any time to think. With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and all that, but sometimes the game can get to you. It certainly did in at least a couple of cases recently. Take, for example, what happened to Rene Simoes, the Groucho Marx look-alike who is best remembered as coach of Jamaica's 1998 World Cup team and later as the coach who led Brazil's women to the silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Until just the other day, Simoes, 56, was coaching Portuguesa in the Brazilian second division, and things were not going well.

So, Ivan Ljubicic, how did you spend your 30th birthday Thursday? Do any fun stuff? Any good gifts? Oh, we forgot. You had a tennis match. Quarterfinals of that big deal over at the Indian Wells Garden. The one in the big, fancy stadium with all those signs for that French bank, BNP Paribas. Gotta feel sorry for those guys, being a foreign bank and all. They can't put their hands into our tax-paying pockets like our banks. So, you're gonna wear that orange shirt again.

The Croatian parliament has passed a law forcing shops to close on Sundays in a concession to the Roman Catholic Church. The church has campaigned for years for Sundays to be devoted to family or Mass in Croatia, which is almost 90% Roman Catholic. But Croatians have begun spending weekends in shopping malls that have flourished across the country in the last few years and remain open seven days a week. The law takes effect Jan. 1. It allows Sunday shopping over the summer and Christmas holidays.

Like the arsonist turned firefighter, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman has set for himself the task of beating back the nationalist fires he stoked to win his republic's first multi-party election since World War II. And whether the historically antagonistic Serbs and Croats: now the two most populous of Yugoslavia's half-dozen principal ethnic groups go to war for a fourth time this century may rest on whether Tudjman succeeds.

Forces of this secessionist republic sought peace on Christmas Day in underground shelters, where they celebrated Mass while fighting went on outside across the republic. In Zagreb, the first civilian plane allowed to land in the Croatian capital in five months brought tons of aid and Christmas gifts. Yugoslavia's Serb-dominated federal army, which controls Croatian airspace, apparently made an exception to allow the plane to land, officials said.

The war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslav federation convicted a wartime leader of Croatia's rebel Serbs of murder, torture and persecution and sentenced him to 35 years in prison. Judges at the court in The Hague said Milan Martic was responsible for hundreds of killings in the Krajina region of southern Croatia. He also was convicted of ordering two days of cluster bombing of the Croatian capital, Zagreb, in May 1995 that killed at least seven civilians and injured more than 200.

Ivica Racan, a former communist leader who led Croatia's first staunchly pro-Western government from 2000 to 2003, died Sunday of cancer at a clinic in Zagreb. He was 63. Racan, who recently stepped down as the leader of Croatia's strongest opposition party, the Social Democrats, had a cancerous kidney removed in mid-February. Doctors said this month the cancer had spread to Racan's brain and he had been in critical condition for the last two weeks.