SERBIA TURNS CRAZY

Demonstrators attacked the United States Embassy and set part of it ablaze on Thursday as tens of thousands of angry Serbs took to the streets of Belgrade to protest Kosovo’s declaration of independence.

The United States has been a strong advocate of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia and was among the first countries to recognize the new state, stoking deep resentment. Rian Harris, an embassy spokeswoman, said that a body had been found inside the building, but that all embassy staff members were accounted for.

Witnesses said that at least 100 people broke into the embassy, which was closed, and burned some of its rooms. One protester ripped the American flag from the facade of the building. An estimated 1,000 demonstrators cheered as the vandals, some wearing masks, jumped onto the building’s balcony waving a Serbian flag and chanting “Serbia, Serbia!” the witnesses said. A police convoy firing tear gas dispersed the crowd.

Serbian television reported that the Croatian Embassy had also been attacked, and the state news agency said that the Bosnian and Turkish Embassies were also targets. The police said at least 140 people had been injured in the incidents, 32 of them police officers. Security sources estimated that 150,000 people joined the protests. Groups also broke into a McDonald’s in central Belgrade and destroyed its interior. Witnesses said vandals were attacking foreign-owned shops, including a Nike store, and were seen carrying off shoes and other goods as the Serbian police looked on.

He added that the security that had been provided was completely inadequate. The United Nations Security Council issued a unanimous statement of the 15 members saying they “condemn in the strongest terms the mob attacks against embassies in Belgrade which have resulted in damage to embassy premises and have endangered diplomatic personnel.” The action was taken at the urging of Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador.

In recent days, Western leaders have watched with growing alarm as Serbia’s hard-line prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, who helped lead the revolution that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, has replicated the nationalist talk of the late dictator, who used Serbs’ outrage that their ancestral heartland was dominated by Muslim Albanians to come to power in Serbia. “As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia,” Mr. Kostunica told the crowd in Belgrade. “We’re not alone in our fight. President Putin is with us,” he said of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

In a sign of the divisions within Serbia’s government, the pro-Western president, Boris Tadic, was absent from the rally, on a state visit to Romania.

But while Moscow has gained in popularity in Serbia by blocking Kosovo’s integration into the international community, leading Serbian intellectuals said most Serbs realized that the Kremlin’s willingness to fight for their cause was limited. “

In the short term, analysts said an anti-European Union backlash would gain force after the West’s support for an independent Kosovo. But Marko Blagojevic, an analyst with the Center for Democracy and Free Elections in Belgrade and a pollster, stressed that recent polls showed that 65 percent of Serbs saw their future in the European Union.

Mr. Blagojevic said he did not believe this had drastically changed. He noted that only about 10 percent of Serbs supported going to war over Kosovo. Serbian analysts said that rather than reflecting a resurgence of dangerous nationalism, the protests over Kosovo reflected disenchantment by the “losers of the transition” — those Serbs who have not benefited from the country’s democratic transformation during the eight years since Mr. Milosevic fell.

Unemployment hovers at about 21 percent, while the country’s annual per capita gross domestic product of about $7,400 has made Serbia one of Europe’s poorest countries. Without European Union membership, Serbs do not enjoy the open borders of their neighbors.

Ljubica Gojgic, a leading Serbian commentator, noted that Mr. Milosevic had been overthrown by the Serbian people, who had recently put their faith in a newly elected moderate president, backed by the West. “If Tadic is good enough for the E.U. and Washington, why is he not acceptable to the Albanians in Kosovo?” she asked. “Milosevic is dead.”

CUBA LIBRE - FREE CUBA

Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro stepped down on Tuesday after almost half a century at Cuba's helm, setting the stage for an orderly transfer of power to his brother Raul. For decades, Castro's enemies have hoped his death or resignation would send thousands of Cubans onto the streets to demand democratic reforms in the communist state.But when the 81-year-old revolutionary announced he would not seek a new term as president or leader of Cuba's armed forces when the National Assembly meets on Sunday, the reaction from Cubans was subdued.Some were saddened by Castro's retirement and others hoped it would herald economic changes, but no one was ready to predict major changes to Cuba's one-party rule.

People went about their lives as usual and there appeared to be little or no increase in police presence on the quiet and muggy streets of Havana."I will not aspire to or accept -- I repeat not aspire to or accept -- the positions of president of the Council of State and commander-in-chief," Castro said in a statement published in the Communist Party's Granma newspaper.Castro, who seized power in an armed revolution in 1959, has not appeared in public since emergency intestinal surgery forced him to delegate power to his brother on July 31, 2006.Cuba's National Assembly, a rubber-stamp legislature, is expected to formally nominate Raul Castro, 76, as president.

"The revolution will continue. Fidel resigned in time. It's a wise decision. He let Cubans get used to his absence for 18 months," said Lazaro, a building administrator sweeping a lobby in slippers and an Australian Olympic team shirt."Raul can improve things. He has different economic views from Fidel, though both are the same politically," Lazaro said, praising the Cuban armed forces managed by the younger Castro as the only financially solvent institution in Cuba.

Castro's retirement raised expectations for change on the island -- and calls for democracy by his arch-enemy, the United States -- but Cuba experts said limited economic reforms were more likely than swift political transformation.President George W. Bush, who has tightened the decades-old economic embargo against Castro's government, said his retirement should begin a democratic transition.In Miami, the heartland of exiled opposition to the Castro brothers, reaction was also subdued, in contrast to celebrations after the 2006 announcement of his illness."This is a succession from one tyrant to another. We shouldn't kid ourselves.

While Fidel is alive, he's running the show," Cuban-born U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said in an interview with Reuters.Cuba watchers disagreed and said Castro's retirement clears the way for his brother to wield real authority."Despite the fact that there will be continuity in the short term in Cuba, this is clearly a momentous moment for the people of Cuba," said Dan Erikson, an expert on Cuba at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.Raul Castro has promoted more open debate about Cuba's failings.

Cubans hope he will lift restrictions on travel abroad and allow them to buy and sell cars and homes, currently prohibited in the state-run economy. "Cuba has problems -- many identified by its government -- and Cuban socialism will now sink, swim, or adapt on its own, without Fidel," said Phil Peters of the Lexington Institute in Virginia.

MASSACRE MADE IN USA II

Steve Kazmierczak (27), had gone more than a dozen years without talking to his godfather, Richard Grafer, until about a month ago. In the following weeks they would chat about a lot of things, even maybe going fishing. But as they made plans, he was buying weapons -- part of an arsenal he used Thursday to kill 5 students at NIU (Northern Illinois University).

According to BATF he bought a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, a Glock 9mm pistol, a 9mm Sig-Sauer and a Hi-Point .380 pistol from Tony's Guns & Ammo in. He had a valid Illinois firearm owner's identification card. In addition he bought 2 empty Glock ammo magazines and a holster from Eric Thompson, a Green Bay-based Internet gun dealer who also sold a weapon to Seung-Hui Cho, the 23-year-old Virginia Tech senior who killed 32 people at the Blacksburg, Va., university last april.

Kazmierczak was born and raised in Elk Grove Village. He went on to win academic honors at NIU, but about midway through Elk Grove High School he began battling behavioral problems that landed him in special treatment and required to take mood-stabilizing drugs. Around their junior year Kazmierczak began exploring satanism and white-power movements. After graduating in 1998, he get treatment in Thresholds-Mary Hill House in Chicago. He went into the Army in September 2001, but was discharged in February 2002 for an ''unspecified'' reason.

But there are signs why he recently became unhinged. In June 2006 -- a month after he graduated from NIU with a bachelor's degree in sociology-- their mother, Gail, was diagnosed with ALS disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). She died that September at 58. Recently, his girlfriend in Champaign had broken up with him. Kazmierczak had stopped taking his medications and had been behaving erratically. Last fall, he dropped to part-time status at the U. of I. to take a job Sept. 24 as a guard at Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana, but lasted 2 weeks there, reason unknown.

On Thursday, shortly after 3 p.m., Kazmierczak walked into the lecture hall in DeKalb. He never said a word. He took a deep breath, raised his shotgun and killed Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Elmhurst; Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville; Julianna Gehant, 32, of the Mendota area, and Gayle Dubowski, 20, of Carol Stream. He wounded 16 others before committing suicide. The shotgun was in a guitar case and the handguns and ammo under his coat. Investigators found 48 bullet casings and 6 shotgun shells on the stage. Kazmierczak's sister posted a note on the door of her Urbana home Friday night, expressing her family's condolences to the families of all of the victims.

MASSACRE MADE IN USA

Steven Kazmierczak's quiet, dependable and fun-loving exterior masked troubling details from his past that emerged as a stunned community struggled to understand what caused the 27-year-old to open fire on a class at Northern Illinois University, leaving 6 people dead. A former employee at a Chicago psychiatric treatment center said Kazmierczak was placed there after high school by his parents. She said he used to cut himself, and had resisted taking his medications. He also had a short-lived stint as a prison guard that ended abruptly when he didn't show up for work. He was in the Army for about six months in 2001-02, but he told a friend he'd gotten a psychological discharge.

On Thursday, Kazmierczak, armed with 3 handguns and a pump-action shotgun, stepped from behind a screen on the lecture hall's stage and opened fire on a geology class. He killed 5 students before committing suicide. Kazmierczak had become erratic in the past 2 weeks after he stopped taking his medication.

Kazmierczak spent more than a year at the Thresholds-Mary Hill House in the late 1990s. His parents placed him there after high school because he had become "unruly" at home. On Feb. 9, Kazmierczak walked into a Champaign gun store and picked up 2 guns — a Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun. He bought the 2 other handguns at the same shop — a Hi-Point .380 on Dec. 30 and a Sig Sauer on Aug. 6. Kazmierczak (pronounced kaz-MUR-chek) grew up in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village.

At NIU, 6 white crosses were placed on a snow-covered hill around the center of campus, which was closed Friday. They included the names of 4 victims — Daniel Parmenter, Ryanne Mace, Julianna Gehant, Catalina Garcia. The 2 other crosses were blank, though officials have identified Kazmierczak's final victim as Gayle Dubowski.

We hope that this will be the last time, but, the reality goes in other way. So, where are the next victims?.

AFRICA BURNING

Kenya edged closer to tribal warfare last night after more than 100 people at least 80 of them children burned to death as the church they had fled to for refuge was set alight. More than 200 people, mainly Kikuyus, the same tribe as President Mwai Kibaki, were sheltering for safety in the Kenya Assemblies of God church five miles outside Eldoret in the Rift Valley. An armed gang of young men drawn from the Kalenjin, Luhya and Luo tribes ethnic groups which backed the beaten presidential candidate Raila Odinga stormed the church compound yesterday morning and set it alight.

Last night a further 42 people were in Eldoret's Moi referral hospital with serious burns, many in a critical condition. Kenya Red Cross officials said that number would also rise.

Bishop Korir, the bishop of Eldoret, said more than 15,000 people were sheltering inside church compounds in his diocese. "It is the only place where people felt safe, but now I don't know. This situation is so bad. We have 8,000 people in one compound. They have no food, no water and no security. The situation is so bad there are dead bodies lying in the streets."

Ethnic violence has swept through Kenya since Mwai Kibaki was controversially announced as the winner of last Thursday's presidential election. Paramilitary police have fired on Mr Odinga's supporters in Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria, and in the slums of Nairobi.

Kikuyus, the largest of Kenya's 42 tribes, and the ethnic group of Mr Kibaki, have been fleeing their homes across the Rift Valley, seeking sanctuary in churches and police stations. Friends from other tribes have been hiding Kikuyus in their homes. Up to 50,000 Kikuyus across the country are believed to have left their homes.

Rhetoric was ratcheted up on all sides as the nationwide death toll from post-election riots rose above 200 in clashes which have become increasingly tribal. Mr Odinga said the government was guilty of "genocide", while government ministers in turn accused Mr Odinga of inciting ethnic violence.

Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe warned: "Our officers are exercising a lot of restraint in maintaining the law. This restraint will not last forever."

In a front-page editorial, Kenya's Daily Nation urged both Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga to "stop the senseless slaughter". It accused both men and their acolytes of stirring up ethnic tensions. "How many more must die, how much more must be destroyed before you come to your senses?"

The security forces are becoming increasingly divided along ethnic lines. Kalenjin army officers were said to be taking to the streets of Eldoret joining in the attacks on Kikuyus.

Witnesses said most of the business properties owned by Kikuyus had been burnt down. The marauding gangs were now attacking residential areas. "They stormed our house at night and burnt everything," said Margaret Wanjiru, a Kikuyu. Her 90-year-old grandmother and 75-year-old mother were both too frail to run. They perished in the fire.