Croatia News - CroatiaPress.com

Zagreb, March 28 (CP) – Actress Mira Furlan, a native of Zagreb who has after forging a great career in ex-Yugoslavia moved to the US and become a successful actress there has won a court battle with the city of Zagreb finally returning her home after 16 years.

Furlan has been awarded back her flat in Zagreb, which she had left at the beginning of the 1990’s, as he was hounded for culturally cooperating with Belgrade colleagues, something that brought about a smear campaign against her.

The city authorities’ representatives have said they were pleased with the outcome, as they were not the ones launching the court case against her, but those who had thrown her out of the flat she grew up in and lived in with her grandmother.

Mira Furlan left Zagreb at the height of the war in Croatia and found a new home in the United States where after struggling for a while she managed to get roles in acclaimed series like Babylon 5 and Lost. She has recently returned to Croatia with theatre roles played at the Ulysses Theatre owned by colleague and actor who had seen a similar destiny Rade Serbedzija.

Zagreb, March 28 (CP) – According to the media, US president G.W. Bush will be addressing the Croatian nation from one of capital Zagreb’s squares.

The American president is set to arrive in Zagreb on Friday, April 4 in the afternoon hours after which he is scheduled to meet president Stjepan Mesic.

The next day, Bush will be meeting Prime Minister Ivo Sanader and should after that in the early afternoon hours of Saturday address the Croatian people from one of Zagreb’s squares.

According to Bush himself, he is to visit Croatia in a bid to praise it for the progress it had made in the reforms launched and to discuss future cooperation with senior Croatian officials.

Zagreb residents are bracing themselves for two days of transport collapse, as there are plans to halt traffic in the capital during the arrival and departure of the US president, as well as during him being moved around town during the his two-day visit.

Zagreb, March 28 (CP) – Retired Croatian army general Ivan Korade is being looked for by some 300 police special forces as he is believed to be involved in the killing of four people in Croatia’s Zagorje region.

Ret. Gen. Ivan Korade, 44, known for his short temper and many incidents over the years has gone missing after bodies of people linked to him in some way had been found in two villages, one of which he has a home in.

The first body was found in the late hours of Wednesday in a weekend home and was that of Davor Petris, 36, a fellow Homeland war veteran and friend of Korade who was shot to death and later that day more bodies were discovered, two of a grandmother and her grandson in a home in the village where Korade lives and another of an elderly man in a house a few meters away from the first murder scene.

All three were shot to death with the man also found with a knife stuck in his throat.

Some 300 members of the police were dispatched to the area and are searching for Korade who has been missing from his home.

His son and two other people have been arrested in the incident so far, but their role in the events is still not clear.

The residents in the area have shut themselves in their homes fearing of what might happen to them if they venture out of their homes.

Korade has been know for his brushes with the law in the past and for his violent behaviour and although praised for his achievements during the Homeland war has fallen from grace following war events.
 

Zagreb, March 27 (CP) — A meeting of the Slovene PM Janez Jansa with parliamentary parties’ leaders was held focusing on relations with Croatia.It seems that the meeting ended without a conclusion.

Speaking after the meeting Jansa said that it was aimed at informing those present about the events following Croatia’s freezing of the Protected Ecology and Fisheries Belt (ZERP), which will now, according to Jansa, speed up the work of the joint commissions tasked with drawing up a legal framework of the handing over of border disputes to a third party to rule on i.e. an arbitration.

Zagreb, March 27 — In an interview that HTV had with US president G.W. Bush prior to his visit to Croatia on April 4 and 5, he said among other things that he was hoping he would bring good news to Croatia from the Bucharest NATO summit regarding its membership and said that Croatia was a role model in the region.

Bush said that invites to NATO were also in store for Albania and Macedonia.

He ruled out any possibility of NATO locating its permanent bases in Croatia.

Earlier this month surveys of Croatian residents suggested some 60 percent were supporting Croatia’s NATO entry.

Zagreb, March 27 (CP) — A joint operation by the police and USKOK has resulted in the breaking of yet another human trafficking ring with some 10 people being arrested.

Mostly Turkish, Albanian and Kosovo nationals were being smuggled over the Croatian, Serb and Bosnian borders.

One of the arrested is an assistant police commissioner of a town near a border in Croatia. He is not only to be indicted for the obvious crimes, but also for misuse of position and authority.

Zagreb, March 27 (CP) – According to different Croatian media, the route between the Zagreb airport and the Westin Hotel in the centre of Zagreb will be closed to all traffic on the day of US President G.W. Bush’s arrival in Zagreb, Friday April 4.

It seems that on April 5, the second day of the US president’s stay in Zagreb, all roads he will be travelling on inside Zagreb will also be closed off to traffic.

Although the police are saying there will be no traffic disruption, residents living close to the Westin Hotel are bracing themselves for a state of siege.

Allegedly, all the trash bins will be removed from the area so that the residents will not be allowed to throw away their garbage during the visit, which is not a bad idea overall, as apart from removing the threat of bombs being set in his path, George Bush will also be spared the sight of people picking through garbage bins in search of bottles, a gruesome scene often repeated across Zagreb.

Zagreb, March 27 (CP) – A man allegedly rummaging through a garbage can was killed when a hand grenade exploded around midnight on Wednesday in Zagreb.

The police and an ambulance had been summoned to the scene, only to pronounce the man dead.

The incident is still being investigated and the police on the scene were tight-lipped, but it seems that the man was picking through a garbage container, possibly looking for plastic bottles when the explosion happened.

Since January 2006, people on the verge of existence can be seen picking through garbage containers in search of glass and plastic bottles, as at that time a law on bottle recycling had come into force securing a payment of 50 lipa (about€0.06) per item, enabling those in need to make an extra kuna.

Recently, the Zagreb city authorities had announced that every person picking through garbage would be fined as of this summer. However, a huge outcry by NGOs and citizens themselves had force the decision to be reversed allowing the residents of Zagreb to pick through the trash, although this has proved deadly for one of them.

It is yet to be seen how the hand grenade ended up in the trash container in, practically, the centre of Zagreb and whether there are more such death traps lying around.

Zagreb, March 26 (CP) – A special vessel is to be moored in Dubrovnik’s Gruz port during the summer months tasked with cleaning the sea in case of pollution and taking sea water samples in water quality assessments.

One of the reasons for the ship being engaged is a large number of cruisers that sail into the Dubrovnik aquatorium each summer, posing a potential threat to the crystal clear Adriatic waters.
 

Zagreb, March 26 (CP) — The proposal of a new law on Sunday shopping has been put before parliament. The ruling HDZ is claiming that the law should prevent grey economy and protect workers. Explaining the proposal deputy PM Damir Polancec said that the law envisages Sunday and holidays to be non-working days for shops, while this would be eased during the summer months and in December. The opposition does not see a problem in shops being opened on Sunday, but rather in workers being paid adequately for working Sundays, describing the ban on shops opening on Sunday as the capitulation of the legal state.