Free Republic

PODGORICA (Reuters) - Perched atop massive cement pillars that tower above Montenegro’s picturesque Moraca river canyon, scores of Chinese workers are building a state-of-the-art highway through some of the roughest terrain in southern Europe. The government has described the 165 km (103 mile) highway, with its imposing bridges and deep-cut tunnels, as the construction of the century and a pathway to the modern world. It is designed to link the port of Bar on Montenegro’s Adriatic coast to landlocked neighbor Serbia. But once the first, challenging 41 km stretch through mountains north of the capital is completed, the government faces...

Asim Krasniqi watches anxiously as the Adriatic Sea creeps ever closer to his beach bar in Albania, a country faced with an alarming pace of coastal erosion. “I’m nostalgic for how this place used to be,” the septuagenarian told AFP wistfully, remembering when this beach in Qerret, to the west of the capital Tirana, was bigger and “many more” foreign tourists came. “Today everything is degraded,” he said.

Slovenia on Monday threatened to withdraw its support for Croatia's European Union aspirations in response to Zagreb's plans to proclaim an exclusive economic zone in the Adriatic Sea. "We are coming to the point at which Slovenia will have to re-consider its policy (of backing Croatia's accession to the EU)," Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel said. However, Croatian President Stipe Mesic replied that it was "in Slovenia's interest that Croatia accelerates its approach to both the European Union and Mesic also voiced regret over the Slovenian government Sunday's move to recall its ambassador to Zagreb, Peter Bekes, "for consultations" amid...

Priest dies after heroic sea rescue By Jeremy Charles, Evening Standard 31 July 2003 A Priest who dived into a stormy sea died after helping to save seven drowning children. Father Stefano Garzegno, 44, suffered a fatal heart attack minutes after helping drag the last child ashore at Termoli on Italy's Adriatic coast. Strong winds had made swimming conditions dangerous.