EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Ten years after the end of the war in Kosovo, the EU needs to step up pressure on both Kosovo and Serbia in order to have a number of blocked war crimes cases solved, according to a fresh report by human rights group Amnesty International.

During the 1998 - 1999 war in Kosovo, more than 3,000 ethnic Albanians were victims of "enforced disappearances by Serbian police, paramilitary and military forces."

The EU's rule of law mission should help investigate and prosecute "those responsible for enforced disappearances and abductions" in Kosovo, says the report

Similarly, "an estimated 800 Serbs, Roma and members of other minority groups were abducted, reportedly by members of the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA), the majority after the international armed conflict ended in June 1999, under the eyes of the NATO-led peacekeeping Kosovo force," Amnesty International said in a report published on Monday (8 June).

"A decade after the end of the war, around 1,900 families across Kosovo and Serbia still have no details about the fate or whereabouts of their missing relatives, said Amnesty's Balkans expert Sian Jones.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - In an effort to counter increasing worries about infringement of press freedom by governments in Europe, both within the EU and beyond, the editor-in-chief of Germany's weekly Stern magazine, together with EU media commissioner Viviane Reding on Tuesday (9 June) celebrated the launch of the European Charter on Freedom of the Press.

Stern editor Hans-Ulrich Jörges hands over the Charter to media commissioner Viviane Reding

Speaking to journalists in Brussels, Ms Reding expressed her concern about threats to media freedom in "the east" but was reluctant to acknowledge similar worries emanating from Italy.

The charter, while having no legal teeth and being largely a symbolic document, should begin to have some effect at the point of accession to the EU, as it is intended to be made a condition of entry for EU candidate countries in future accession negotiations.

"[The commission does] not have a direct competence to make the charter legally binding," said Ms Reding, "but the journalists will give the charter to the politicians, who will have to see that the charter is applied in real terms."

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi visits former colonial ruler Italy this week to forge deeper trade and investment ties amid criticism by right groups of Tripoli's treatment of African migrants. 

Gadhafi will receive guests in his tent pitched in the Villa Doria Pamphili, Rome's biggest public park, including some of the Italians he kicked out in 1970 to punish Italy for its 1911-1941 colonization.

As well as meeting with the Italian expellees, Gadhafi's three-day visit will also include a series of meetings with Italian officials, including Premier Silvio Berlusconi, and audiences with university students, businesspeople and a delegation of prominent Italian women.

The Italian Foreign Ministry said Gadhafi and Berlusconi are expected to sign a number of bilateral agreements.

Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan say they intend to seek World Trade Organization membership as a single customs bloc. The move would end their membership bids to join the global trade group as individual states.  

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Moscow would only join the WTO, if the three former Soviet bloc countries are accepted as a single applicant.

Putin was quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency after a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Community in Moscow as saying that he, along with the prime ministers of Belarus and Kazakhstan would "notify the WTO of their intention to start negotiations on the accession of the tripartite customs union to the organization and the end of national negotiations."

In a landmark decision on domestic violence, the European Court of Human Rights has said Turkey failed to protect a woman from being murdered by her son- in- law and ordered Ankara to pay damages.  

The Strasbourg-based court ruled that Turkey had denied a citizen the "right to life" by failing to prevent her murder by her son-in-law. The case marks the first time that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled against a state in a case of domestic violence.

The court also ruled Turkey had violated the convention on human rights which prohibits torture, inhumane treatment and discrimination.

The government in Ankara was ordered to pay 36,000 euros ($50,000) in compensation to a applicant whose former husband shot her mother.

"This is a precedent for further cases in countries of the European Council," a court spokesperson said.

It would take a Barack Obama to unseat Angela Merkel in the September election. Her rival Frank-Walter Steinmeier is anything but. The dour bureaucrat lacks the campaign skills needed to offset waning confidence in his Social Democrats.

They say it will take a miracle. Germany's center-left Social Democrats are faced with a challenge that will likely prove insurmountable. Conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel, analysts and commentators agree, is destined to win a second term in Germany's general election on Sept. 27.

 German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier would like to become chancellor. Analysts say it's unlikely. The SPD failed miserably in Sunday' European parliamentary election, managing just 20.8 percent in Germany. The party is languishing in opinion polls and with just three and a half months left until the general election, it faces an even steeper climb than in 2005. Back then, the SPD almost pulled it off, with then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder -- the SPD's tub-thumping, baby-kissing, football-kicking, soundbite-coining campaign warhorse -- losing to Merkel by the narrowest of margins.

LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - Commuters endured rush-hour chaos on Wednesday as a 48-hour strike shut down most of the capital's underground rail network.

Faced with closed stations and enormous bus queues, millions of people either walked, cycled or even roller-skated into work.

Transport for London arranged taxi-sharing at major rail termini and laid on free river services and guided commuter cycle routes.

The 250-mile underground network normally runs over 500 trains at peak hours and carries some 3.5 million passengers a day.

But not all lines were closed. London Underground said there was a good service on the Northern Line and reduced services running on sections of the District, Jubilee, Victoria, Metropolitan and Piccadilly lines.

Six Metropolitan police officers have been suspended from duty following ­allegations they used a form of water-based torture on suspected drugs ­smugglers, it emerged last night.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said it was investigating the conduct of officers based in Enfield, north London, during drugs raids in the borough last November.

Neither the IPCC nor Scotland Yard would comment on the nature of the ­allegations but sources said the officers were accused of pushing suspects' heads into buckets of water.

One IPCC document is said to use the word "waterboarding" - the CIA technique condemned as torture by Barack Obama - in connection with the allegations.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says Russia could consider getting rid of its nuclear arsenal if all other countries agreed to do so as well. 

After meeting with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Putin was asked if he could imagine a Russia without nuclear weapons.

"Of course," he answered. "What do we need nuclear weapons for?"

Steinmeier is visiting leaders in Moscow and has been encouraging the Kremlin to take part in a global disarmament initiative proposed by US President Barack Obama.

Putin's answer did have one caveat, however.

"If those who invented the atomic bomb, and used it, are prepared to do away with atom boms, then we would welcome this," he said, suggesting his country's involvement is dependent on US disarmament.

A card-carrying member of Italy's anti-immigration Northern League has been elected the country's first black mayor.

Sandy Cane, a 47-year-old Italian-American, becomes the mayor of the northern town of Viggiu, near Varese, east of Milan, after winning 30 per cent of votes cast by the town's 5,000 residents.

The translator and hotel director, who has a black American father and an Italian mother, voted for Barack Obama in the US presidential elections. She said there was no contradiction in a black woman representing the Italian anti-immigration party. "To tolerate illegal immigration above all harms those who enter our country with the desire to work and integrate themselves and to have a normal life," she said. "In America I voted for Obama, in Italy for Bossi."

Today at 2:30 pm I was received by the Committee for Constitutional Affairs of the Senate to discuss the popular initiative proposed law "Clean Parliament" that has being lying in the Senate for 18 months.

The text of my presentation:
"Almost two years after the collection of signatures for the popular initiative law called "Clean Parliament" I have the honour of being received and heard as the first signatory of the proposed law. Two years to talk at the Committee for Constitutional Affairs. A Committee that will weigh up the three requests: no convicted person in parliament, a limit of two legislatures for every parliamentarian, nominal elections of the candidates. Two years wait for a law signed by 350,000 people. It's a scandal that 350,000 Italian citizens haven't even been considered for 2 years. It's a scandal that in Parliament there are 20 people definitively convicted and statute-barred like Berlusconi, D'Alema, and Andreotti. It's disgusting that 70 of our representatives are convicted at the first or second level or are under investigation. Cuffaro and Dell'Utri are senators because of judicial merits, being convicted at the first level for mafia relationships. This Committee, this parliament has nothing to do with democracy. Six people have decided the names of who became a deputy or a senator. They have chosen 993 friends, lawyers and excuse the term, a few "zoccola" {sluts} and they elected them. They elected them, not the citizens who couldn't even choose their representatives. Dear members of the Committee, you are illegal, unconstitutional, and anti-democratic. Out of respect for yourselves and for the Italians, you should resign as soon as possible. Luigi De Magistris and Sonia Alfano are two respectable Italians elected by so many respectable citizens. You should start to get worried about these citizens. De Magistris had 450,000 votes, the second in Italy, Alfano 165,000 votes, the top woman in Italy. Those who went to vote were able to choose them. Why is this not possible for the Italian Parliament as well?

why indeed?

~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~