Serbians

The world never seems to stop churning out little girls who become young women who can maul helpless tennis balls until, until -- well, until they make even Maria Sharapova look decrepit. So here's Ana Ivanovic, 19, 6 feet tall, brunet, Serbian, jovial, talks so fast you wonder how she breathes, and bound for her first Grand Slam final.

Slobodan Milosevic's feared paramilitary commander was found guilty Wednesday in the 2003 murder of pro-Western Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, an assassination that shocked the nation and damaged the cause of democratic reform. Milorad Ulemek, former head of the notorious Red Berets, his deputy and 10 other men were convicted of planning and carrying out the murder of Serbia's first democratically elected prime minister since World War II.

The U.N. war crimes tribunal quashed the conviction of a former Bosnian Serb army commander for complicity in genocide in the Srebrenica massacre, but said he still had to serve 15 years for related crimes. Col. Vidoje Blagojevic had helped with the transfer of Bosnian Muslims from the U.N.'s so-called safe area of Srebrenica in 1995. As many as 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered there by Serb forces.

Serbs condemned Serbs in a Belgrade courtroom Tuesday, sending to prison four men from a paramilitary unit known as the Scorpions who were videotaped executing unarmed Bosnian Muslim youths as part of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. It was the first time a Serbian court confronted the events in Srebrenica, where nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in Europe's deadliest atrocity since World War II.

The U.N. war crimes tribunal on Wednesday sentenced former Bosnian Serb police officer Dragan Zelenovic to 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to the rape and torture of Muslims during Bosnia-Herzegovina's 1992-95 war. Zelenovic, a 46-year-old former paramilitary leader, was indicted in 1996 in connection with atrocities committed against non-Serbs in his native Foca region, southeast of Sarajevo, including a gang rape of a 15-year-old girl.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic remained a divisive figure in death Thursday as controversies erupted over the display of his coffin and former political opponents hurried to organize a demonstration to counter the adulation expected at his funeral. The opponents launched a text-message campaign urging people to come to the center of Belgrade on Saturday and let fly balloons at the same time as the rites.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic died of heart failure while in his prison cell, according to preliminary autopsy findings announced Sunday by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. The autopsy was performed by Dutch doctors in the Netherlands, and Serbian pathologists who attended did not dispute the findings.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was found dead Saturday in the prison cell where he had spent his final years facing trial on genocide and war crimes charges for his role in the nationalist wars that racked the Balkans in the 1990s.

A Serbian Australian man accused of ordering the torture of Croats during the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia was arrested in Sydney, Australia's attorney general said. Croatian authorities have accused Dragan Vasiljkovic -- known as "Capt. Dragan" -- of ordering torture and expulsion of Croatian soldiers and civilians as a commander of a Serb paramilitary unit during the 1991 war in Croatia.

Fatmir Limaj, a senior officer of the Kosovo Albanian rebels, was acquitted Wednesday of charges of torturing and murdering ethnic Serbian and ethnic Albanian civilians at a prison camp during the 1998-99 war. A second defendant, Isak Musliu, also was acquitted, but a third, Haradin Balaj, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for executing nine prisoners in the woods in July 1998. All three had pleaded innocent on all charges at the U.N.'s Yugoslav war crimes tribunal.