Croatia News - CroatiaPress.com

A 16-year-old boy and his 15-year old girlfriend, both reform school pupils in the coastal city of Split are being investigated for drugging and then setting alight their 21-year-old acquaintance at the end of January 2008.
The two invited the unsuspecting friend for a walk and then offered him a well-known fizzy beverage that they laced with sleeping tablets.
After that they forced the young man to snort cocaine with them and later the girl poured accelerant on him, while her 16-year-old accomplice lit a lighter in an attempt to set the young man alight.
This is when the mother of the victim appeared in the cellar of the building where the drama took place and the young man was taken to hospital suffering burns to the head and legs.
The 16-year-old boy has a long police record and is in custody, while the girl has never been registered as an offender before and was returned to her reform school.

Zagreb, February 24 (CP) – Churchgoers were shocked on a particular Sunday, when they saw priest Ivan Cucek, a convicted paedophile deliver mass in a church in the centre of Zagreb.

Priest Ivan Cucek was sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended for three years for fondling 11 and 12-year-old girls, the sentence handed down in 2004. The ruling also stated that Cucek was a sick man and was no longer in contact with children.

Despite the church authorities forcing him even before he was sentenced to leave his post as Sestine priest, he refused and only left when he was convicted of committing 16 offences of lewd acts.

Cucek was housed at the home for retired priests at Zagreb’s Kaptol.

However, recently Cucek appeared at a church in the centre of Zagreb, leading mass, the official church authorities’ explanation being that he was filling in for the local parish priest and this was a ‘one off’, as he has retired.

Some have commented on this by saying it was obvious that the go-ahead for Cucek to serve mass had been given from higher church authority, as his three-year suspension had expired.

Croatia has recently waged a wide operation against paedophiles and so far the homes of more than 180 suspected paedophiles were raided.

Zagreb, February 24 (CP) – A professional fisherman from the town of Komiza on the Croatian island of Vis has managed to catch a 50-kilo white shark on Saturday.

This is not the first time such a shark that is not often seen in Croatian waters has been caught, as during NATO attacks on Serbia in 1999, when the US Six Fleet was roaming the Adriatic, another specimen was caught.

White sharks are not often spotted in Croatian waters and their numbers have been generally dwindling since their favourite pray, the bluefin tuna is nearly extinct in the Adriatic due to overfishing.

Zagreb, February 24 (CP) – Croatian tennis player Ivo Karlovic has lost the semi-finals of the ABN Amro tournament in Rotterdam to Michael Llodra of France 7-5, 7-6 (4).

The 16 aces that Karlovic bombarded Llodra with did not stop the Frenchman from winning.

All the seeded players were beaten in the first two rounds, including the world’s second ranked player Rafael Nadal.

Karlovic is currently ranked 23rd on the ATP list.

Zagreb, February 24 (CP) – Counterfeit five kuna coins have appeared in Eastern Slavonia, this being the first time that five kuna coins are forged in Croatia.

The police have said that only a few coins have been reported and stressed that the forgery is obvious once the coin is taken a good look at, as it is somewhat smaller and lighter than the original.

Central bank officials have said there was no need to panic, as the five coins that had been detected so far are a tiny fraction of the 52 million coins that are currently in circulation.

It was also stressed that minting a large number of such coins was not profitable for the crooks.

Zagreb, February 23 (CP) – Two people suffered serious injuries when their light plane crashed in Northern Croatia’s village of Nedelisce near Cakovec on Saturday afternoon.

The Cessna Apollo first hit a house, then got caught into some cables and finally crashed into a van parked near the home the plane had initially hit.

The details of the incident will be known once a full investigation is carried out. The two passengers, the pilot and allegedly his instructor were rushed to hospital, the eyewitnesses claiming their injuries were substantial.

Zagreb, February 23 (CP) – Arsenal striker and member of the Croatian national team Eduardo da Silva suffered a sickening ankle injury during a clash with Birmingham City’s Martin Taylor in the 3rd minute of the Premier League game.

The Brazilian-born Croatian international’s injury was so grave that no replays of the incident were shown on TV.

Eduardo was rushed to hospital and immediately operated on.

He will be wearing a cast for the next six weeks, which is much better than initially thought but will be most probably out as far as Croatia’s Euro 2008 challenge in the summer goes.

The Croatian squad manager Slaven Bilic said he was saddened by the event and said that at this point the most important thing was for Eduardo to recover and whether this will be before Euro 2008 or after was beside the point.
 

Zagreb, February 23 (CP) – Croatian President Stjepan Mesic paid tribute to former Slovene president Janez Drnovsek who died overnight at his home some 20 kilometres from the capital Ljubljana.

Expressing his condolences to the current Slovene president Danilo Tuerk, Mesic described the late Drnovsek as a politician whose legacy has been the relatively easy transition of Slovenia from being a part of Yugoslavia to becoming an independent state at the start of the 1990’s.

Mesic said Drnovsek was always putting a great effort into maintaining and building good neighbourly relations with Croatia and said he had not only lost a colleague, but also a friend, as the two grew close in the days of the break-up of Yugoslavia, when they were both members of its presidency and tried to stop the war from igniting.

Drnovsek became Slovenia’s president from 2002, but did not seek a new five-year term in office in 2007, due to his ill health.

In 2005 he turned to holistic medicine after being diagnosed with kidney tumour in 1999, saying regular medicine could not help him.

Zagreb, February 23 (CP) – According to Croatia’s meteorological institute’s report for 2007, Croatia enjoyed an extremely warm 2007 with an average temperature of 13.6 degrees Celsius, the second highest average temperature during the 1861 to 2007 observation period.

During the July 19 to 22 heat wave, towns like Pazin (40 degrees), Rijeka (40 degrees), Daruvar (39 degrees) had reached their absolute maximum temperatures recorded.

So far the absolute maximum temperature recorded in Croatia has been that in the port of Ploce in 1981, when during a heat wave the thermometers hit the 42.8 mark.

Zagreb, February 23 (CP) – The founder of the third strongest party in Croatia Drazen Budisa has applied to be scrapped as its member.

Budisa, the man who had founded the Croatian Social Liberal Party  (HSLS) in 1989 and who headed it for 12 years has decided to leave.

There are speculations that Budisa decided to leave due to announcements of the possible merger of HSLS with the Croatian Peoples’ Party (HNS) a move that could place the current president and Budisa’s arch rival at the 2000 presidential elections Budisa lost to him, Stjepan Mesic at the helm of the new party.