COVID-19 - Updates

"India’s COVID-19 crisis is far from over, and vaccines alone won’t help.  Here’s why" PBS NewsHour 5/3/2021

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SUMMARY:  The COVID-19 crisis in India shows little sign of slowing down.  As death tolls and infections skyrocket, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership is under increasing political pressure and scrutiny.  The country is short on vaccines, and other life-saving supplies like oxygen and antiviral drugs.  William Brangham speaks to Indian reporter Barkha Dutt about what she's seeing on the ground.

 

 

"Dr. Vivek Murthy on new US inoculation strategy and distributing vaccines abroad" PBS NewsHour 5/4/2021

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SUMMARY:  U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, a key member of the president's team combating COVID-19, joins Judy Woodruff to discuss President Joe Biden's aims to vaccinate 70 percent of all U.S. adults with at least one dose by July 4, and how a focus on rural communities will help achieve that goal, and how the U.S. plans to distribute vaccines abroad.

 

 

"Waiving vaccine patent rights may be the ‘only way’ to end the pandemic" PBS NewsHour 5/5/2021

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SUMMARY:  President Biden announced that the U.S. will support waiving patent rights for the COVID vaccines — a major move that follows a call domestically, and internationally, for America to provide much quicker and greater assistance to the rest of the world.  William Brangham looks at the potential impact of this decision and the reaction to it with Madhavi Sunder of the Georgetown University Law Center.

 

 

"The government wants to pay for every COVID funeral.  Experts worry the process is flawed" PBS NewsHour 5/5/2021

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SUMMARY:  In the past few weeks, a new and large form of COVID-19 relief has opened in the U.S., with the federal government offering to pay for all or most of every funeral of those lost to the disease.  Lisa Desjardins reports on the unprecedented scale of help, how the rollout has fared so far, and the questions it raises about the cost of grief in America.

 

 

"Waiving the vaccine patent may come down to giving pharmaceutical companies incentives" PBS NewsHour 5/6/2021

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SUMMARY:  President Joe Biden has given the initial nod for the U.S. to waive patent rights on COVID vaccines to boost international production.  But there are real questions over how effective these moves would be, what other countries feel about it, and when this would translate into action.  William Brangham discusses the matter with Rachel Silverman, a policy fellow at the Center for Global Development.

 

 

"Honoring 5 American lives lost to COVID-19" PBS NewsHour 5/7/2021

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SUMMARY:  Each week, the PBS NewsHour pauses to remember five Americans lost to the COVID-19 pandemic, and shares memories and highlights from their lives.

 

 

"Serbia’s winning fight against COVID-19 raises questions about ‘vaccine diplomacy'" PBS NewsHour 5/8/2021

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SUMMARY:  Serbia has had considerable success in its COVID-19 vaccination campaign, with the third-highest rate in Europe; supply is mostly from China and Russia.  While Serbia's efforts have received high praise, experts are warning about unprecedented, growing Chinese influence in the country and the wider region through so-called 'vaccine diplomacy.'  Jorgen Samson and Aleksandar Papajic report from Serbia.

MUSLIM WORLD - Bosnia, Symbol of Reconciliation

"A historic Bosnia mosque is rebuilt in powerful symbol of post-war reconciliation" PBS NewsHour 5/9/2016

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SUMMARY:  Twenty years ago, the vicious civil war in Bosnia between Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosnians left more than 100,000 dead, and the country remains segregated along religious and ethnic lines to this day.  Now, both sides are taking steps toward reconciliation with the rebuilding of a historic mosque in Serbian Bosnia, but skepticism abounds.  Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  The nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina remains bitterly divided more than 20 years after a vicious civil war.  Tens of thousands died, and millions were made refugees.

Bosnian Serbs were largely responsible for driving Muslim families from their homes during the early stages of the war.  Now many hope the reopening of a United Nations Heritage Site, a mosque, in the Serbian town of Banja Luka is a big step on the road to reconciliation.

Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant has the story.

MALCOLM BRABANT (NewsHour):  The Muslim call to prayer rang out from the 16th Century Ferhadija Mosque 23 years to the day that Serb militiamen blew it to pieces; 10,000 Muslims traveled to Banja Luka to witness this act of renaissance, a generation after the Serbs had attempted to systematically erase not only the population, but also their culture and heritage.

Ibrahim Ahmedbasic lost his legs in one of the worst single attacks of the war.  He was 21 when a Serb mortar exploded in the town of Tuzla, killing 71 and injuring 250.

IBRAHIM AHMEDBASIC, Bosnian Muslim (through interpreter):  When the mosques began to be reconstructed, people started to coexist again.  So you can see, people are capable of living normally.

MALCOLM BRABANT:  The Bosnian War was the most vicious of those that accompanied the break up of former Yugoslavia, largely because of the population’s complicated ethnic and religious mix.  The conflict began in a wave of nationalism in 1992, when the Christian Orthodox Bosnian Serbs attempted a land grab and attacked areas occupied by predominantly Catholic Bosnian Croats and Muslims.

In 1993, the country fragmented still further, when the Croats launched an offensive against the Muslims.  Peace finally arrived in 1995 with a deal signed in Dayton, Ohio.  The accord preserved Bosnia as a single state, but as two separate entities, a Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic; 21 years later, the divisions are as entrenched as ever.

Banja Luka is the capital of the Serb Republic, which makes the restoration of the mosque so symbolic.  It took 15 years to reconstruct.  Craftsmen employed 16th century techniques and recovered 75 percent of the original masonry that had been discarded in city dumps and in nearby lakes.

WAR CRIMES - Balkan War Criminals (NewsHour Bookshelf)

"How Balkan war criminals were hunted down and brought to justice" PBS NewsHour 3/28/2016

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SUMMARY:  Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić is the latest perpetrator to be convicted of war crimes committed during the 1990s Balkan wars.  In "The Butcher's Trail," author Julian Borger examines how tough it was to hunt down those responsible for the most grotesque atrocities of the conflict.  Borger sits down with chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner.

WEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Last Thursday, a U.N. tribunal convicted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić of war crimes and genocide in the 1990s Balkan wars.

A look at how tough it was to hunt down those indicted is the focus of the newest addition to the “NewsHour Bookshelf."

Margaret Warner has that.

MARGARET WARNER (NewsHour):  The genocidal crimes of the 1990s Balkan wars stunned the world, mass killings, concentration camps, systematic rape.

Many, but by no means all of the perpetrators were the majority Serbs, starting with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.  The U.N. set up an international tribunal to investigate and indict some 161 people it found most responsible.

The challenge was to actually apprehend them.  How they did so is captured in a gripping new book by Julian Borger, longtime correspondent and editor at The Guardian newspaper, titled “The Butcher's Trail: How the Search for Balkan War Criminals Became the World's Most Successful Manhunt.”

Julian Borger, welcome.

You open this book with a really vivid account of the capture of the last of these criminals in a forest in Serbia.  Who was he and what had he done?

JULIAN BORGER, Author, “The Butcher's Trail”:  He was Goran Hadžić.

And he used to run a Serb statelet inside Croatia which had been carved out of Croatia by what was called ethnic cleansing, a euphemism for mass killing of other ethnicities.  So he had overseen that killing on a large scale.

SERBIA - Mladic Arristed!

"War Crimes Suspect Mladic 'Personified the Brutality' of Bosnian Conflict" PBS Newshour Transcript 5/26/2011 (includes video)

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MARGARET WARNER (Newshour): And for more on today's arrest of Mr. Mladic and the significance of it, we turn to U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues Stephen Rapp. He previously served as a lead prosecutor in U.N.-sponsored war crimes trials for the African nations of Rwanda and Sierra Leone. And Emma Daly, who covered the wars in the former Yugoslavia for the British newspaper, the independent, she's now communications director at Human Rights Watch.

Welcome to you both.

Ambassador Rapp, you have been to Serbia five times in the last 15 months. What new can you add to the circumstances of his capture?

STEPHEN RAPP, U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues: Well, that it is -- that it's a Serbian operation.

They were maintaining surveillance over the extended family. We have been in touch with them. We have been providing them with advice and assistance with the FBI. They have been meeting with us regularly to inform us on their progress, which is important, because our -- our assistance to Serbia depends upon that full cooperation.

But this was a -- was a situation of maintaining surveillance and finally getting the signal that this is where he was, and being able to move in on him.

MARGARET WARNER: And are you saying the FBI was actively assisting the investigation?

STEPHEN RAPP: The FBI made two visits to Serbia and -- to provide advice, our Federal Bureau of Investigations actively involved in chasing down fugitives both on federal and state warrants, and could provide some technical assistance and advice about how to do that.

That wasn't operational, however. That is just an example of what we have done to try to make this happen.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, and I want to get back to that, but let me bring in Emma Daly here.

Ms. Daly, remind us about Mladic. And how critical a figure was he in this top triumvirate, the Serb president, Milosevic, the Bosnian Serb president, Karadzic, and himself?

EMMA DALY, Human Rights Watch: Well, I think he really personified the brutality of the war.

He was a brilliant strategist in many ways, the architect of the siege of Sarajevo, of mass ethnic cleansing of villages across the country, and most famously -- or infamously -- of the massacre at Srebrenica.

He was really -- to some in Serbian nationalist circles, he was really a folk hero. And he -- he just espoused this very strong sense of -- he was trying to take revenge in a way for what he saw as abuses against the Serb people in the past.

MARGARET WARNER: And so how significant would you say today's arrest is in maybe finally beginning to close the chapter on this whole horrible event?

EMMA DALY: Oh, I think it's extremely important. I mean, his arrest is absolutely crucial.

I think it's extremely important, not just for his victims in Bosnia, of whom there are many. I think that they will probably feel a great sense of relief that the relatives of those who died in the war will finally get a day in court.

I think it also has a wider significance, in that it sends a message to those people who are engaged in potential atrocities right now in other countries around the world.

MARGARET WARNER: Ambassador Rapp, going back to the circumstances leading up to this, how did he evade capture for 16 years? I mean, we saw those videos, him at a wedding, that famous one of him out skiing or walking in the snow. Was the Serb government protecting him?

STEPHEN RAPP: Well, all I can say is that, since I have been in this post and working closely with the government of President Tadic, they have been digging in and seeking -- seeking his arrest, and I think turning over every stone to make it happen.

I think, prior to that time, there were situations where there wasn't a diligent effort to find him, even a time when he was drawing a military pension. But -- but, in the course of the last two years or more, there has been this effort.

And I think it's a reflection of the fact that -- that this government and the people have decided to turn this page and to move forward in Europe. It's also because of the conditions that countries have placed on the admission of Serbia to the family of nations, particularly by the E.U.

While the current government of Serbia may not have been protecting Mladic I believe that the people of Serbia were protecting him. The crimes commuted in Serbia could not have happened without the support or ambivalence of the people. This mirrors Nazi Germany.

The Bosnian Conflict was an Ethnic/Nationalistic based war, and the people that conducted this war WERE seen by many as heroes.