The Serbian province of Kosovo, or the Republic of Kosova as the majority Albanian Kosovar population calls it, declared independence last Sunday, February 17th. The UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is moving out, and a European Union force is preparing to move in to help with the political transition. On Thursday, February 21st, the US Embassy, as well as the embassies of other countries supporting the declaration of independence, suffered attacks in the Serbian capital city of Belgrade. On the UN Security Council, Russia and China are supporting Serbia's claim that Kosovo's declaration violates international law. Meanwhile, the UN force...

Exactly two years ago in France, riots took place in the suburban areas of the largest cities like Paris, Lyon, Marseille and diagnosed the failure of the French integration of minorities. Two years went by. Still no significant effort, not even a mere initiation of a draft policy emerged. Will it take even more extreme acts of desperation to have legislators feel at least concerned by the issue? The integration system was the cornerstone, the pride of the French state. Is it necessary to recall the Nation has successfully absorbed immigrants from Europe and all over the world throughout centuries?...

If we’re lucky, the death of Slobodan Milosevic will bring renewed American and European focus on the fate of the western Balkans, which is still recovering from the dictator’s deadly legacy. After 10 years of battlefield defeats, genocide, repression, and warlordism, Serbians overthrew the Butcher of the Balkans amid street protests in 2001. Milosevic died humiliated in a Dutch prison, on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The region faces still lingering ethnic and religious tension; and any final resolution of the region’s political conflict is still some ways off.