In Croatia

Jure Zubcic, a 29-year-old city councillor from Zadar, has become known for taking direct action against anti-Serb graffiti - altering it from "kill a Serb" to "kiss a Serb".

Even though someone filed a criminal complaint against him, he believes that his actions have had a positive impact.

The Croatian Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs sent a diplomatic note on Friday to the Serbian embassy in Zagreb, expressing its "strongest protest over the unveiling of a memorial plaque to Mladen Bratic, commander of the former Yugoslav People's Army forces and associated Serbian paramilitary units in the attack on Vukovar".

For her book, entitled 'Amoral Communities: Collective Crimes in Time of War', she interviewed 131 members of these communities from parts of Croatia that were directly or indirectly influenced by the conflict.

The Croatian Supreme Court has upheld a verdict acquitting former policemen Frano Drljo and Bozo Krajina of committing a war crime by killing six elderly Serb civilians in the village of Grubori near Knin during an 'anti-terrorist' sweep conducted after Croatia's victorious Operation Storm defeated rebel Serb forces in August 1995, Croatian media reported on Wednesday.

The county court in the Croatian city of Varazdin on Friday rejected a request for the early release of former Serbian paramilitary commander Dragan Vasiljkovic, widely known as Captain Dragan.

Vasiljkovic applied for conditional release because he has served two-thirds of his sentence.

A retired Serbian State Security Service officer told the retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Wednesday that he met the defendants in November 1994 on Petrova Gora mountain in Croatia, which at that time was part of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina established by rebel Croatian Serbs.

A defence witness at former Serbian Security Service officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic's retrial said he knew Serbian paramilitary units were operating in Croatia in 1991 but didn't know about crimes they committed.

The Croatian Interior Ministry is planning to introduce an auxiliary reserve police force that will draw also on retired officers - mostly to help deal with the migrant burden and strengthen Croatia's border, which is also an EU external border.

A protected witness told the retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Wednesday that the Serbian State Security Service (SDB) was not involved in the so-called 'Log Revolution' that saw Serbs rebel against the Croatian authorities in 1990.

Human rights groups in Serbia and Croatia have called on authorities in both countries to do more to recognise and aid victims of a 1995 Croatian military operation that ended the country's war against rebel Serbs.

Croatia on Monday marked the 24th anniversary of Operation Storm, a military blitz that quashed a breakaway Serb statelet but put to flight almost 200,000 Serb civilians.