Serbia

BELGRADE, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Thousands gathered in a square in in central Belgrade on Saturday in the biggest protest yet over parliamentary and municipal elections on Dec. 17, results of which the demonstrators want anulled.

Protesters waving Serbian flags and holding a banner reading "We do not accept" cheered Marinika Tepic, a leader of the opposition Serbia Against Violence alliance, who has been on hunger strike since Dec. 18.

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Thousands of people rallied in Serbia’s capital on Saturday, chanting “Thieves!” and accusing the populist authorities of President Aleksandar Vucic of orchestrating a fraud during a recent general election.

The big rally in central Belgrade capped nearly two weeks of street protests against reported widespread irregularities during the Dec. 17 parliamentary and local ballot that were also noted by international election observers.

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbian police said Monday they have detained at least 38 people who took part in a protest against reported widespread irregularities during a recent general ballot that declared the governing populists as winners of the parliamentary and local councils’ elections.

Opposition group Serbia Against Violence has been staging protests since the Dec. 17 elections, saying there has been election fraud, particularly in the capital, Belgrade. Some politicians began a hunger strike.

BELGRADE, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- Coalition around the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) won over 127 out of 250 seats at the snap parliamentary election, announced the country's President Aleksandar Vucic at the headquarters of SNS on Sunday.

"This is an absolute victory that makes me very happy," Vucic said, noting that the coalition around SNS also won the elections in Serbia's northern province of Vojvodina.

KRALJEVO, Serbia (AP) — When Serbia began talks to join the European Union in 2014, pro-Western Serbs were hopeful the process would set their troubled country on an irreversible path to democratization. A decade later, that optimism is gone, replaced by feelings of betrayal — both toward their government, which has slid toward autocracy, and the EU, which has done little to stop it.

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — A man in Bosnia killed his wife and streamed the murder live on Instagram. In neighboring Serbia, 27 women were killed in gender-based attacks this year, despite efforts to raise awareness and reverse the trend. Activists in Kosovo say violence against women there is a “national emergency.”

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that the recent violent outbreaks in Kosovo were unacceptable and perpetrators must be brought to justice.

“I count on all sides to reduce tensions and to refrain from escalatory actions,” he said during a visit to Serbia’s capital Belgrade, after his stops in Bosnia and Kosovo, on the second day of his trip in Western Balkans,

Stoltenberg’s trip reflects Western concerns over the stability of the volatile Balkan region that went through a series of wars in the 1990s.

IBM has stopped advertising on social media platform X after a report said its ads were appearing alongside material praising Adolf Hitler and Nazis — a fresh setback as the site formerly known as Twitter tries to win back big brands and their ad dollars.

The U.S. tech company made the decision after a report Thursday by the liberal advocacy group Media Matters said ads from IBM, Apple, Oracle, NBCUniversal’s Bravo network and Comcast were placed next to antisemitic material on X.

BELGRADE, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic signed a decree on Wednesday to dissolve the parliament based on the government's proposal, and scheduled extraordinary parliamentary elections for Dec. 17.

After signing the decree at the president's office, Vucic invited all citizens and politicians to take part in these elections.

BELGRADE, September 14. /TASS/: Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that his consultations with Prime Minister of unrecognized Kosovo Albin Kurti held in Brussels on Thursday were unsuccessful.

"We had talks, and I think they were unsuccessful in terms of finding a direct way to normalize relations. We all have our proposals. In the end, we accepted the EU’s compromise proposal, which Kurti was not ready to accept, and the meeting ended," the Serbian leader told reporters.