The genocide in Srebrenica is one of the biggest war crimes in Europe since World War II, the Czech prime minister said on Saturday.

"In July 1995, during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, there was a mass murder of captured civilians – genocide in Srebrenica. This event is considered one of the biggest war crimes in Europe since World War II. But it turns out that even today Europe is not safe," Petr Fiala said on Twitter.

He pointed out that Europe is now facing a similar scenario led by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.

"We are again witnessing terrible violence and massacre of civilians, this time by Putin's Russia, which aggressively attacked Ukraine. Strengthening European security is one of the primary tasks of the Czech presidency of the European Union, and that should be the goal of all of us," said the premier.

Every year on July 11, newly identified victims of the Srebrenica genocide are buried in a memorial cemetery in Potocari, a Srebrenica village in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Bosnia-Herzegovina is set to bid farewell to 50 more identified victims on Monday at the 27th anniversary of the genocide.

After Monday's burials in Potocari, the number of genocide victims laid to rest in the memorial cemetery will rise to 6,721.

Srebrenica genocide

More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed when Bosnian Serb forces attacked Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the presence of Dutch peacekeeping troops.

The Serb forces were trying to wrest territory from Bosnian Muslims and Croats to form a state.

The UN Security Council had declared Srebrenica a "safe area" in the spring of 1993. However, troops led by Gen. Ratko Mladic, who was later found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, overran the UN zone.

Dutch troops failed to act as Serb forces occupied the area, killing some 2,000 men and boys on July 11 alone.

About 15,000 residents of Srebrenica fled to the surrounding mountains, but Serb troops hunted down and killed 6,000 more people.

Bodies of victims have been found in 570 different places in the country.

In 2007, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that genocide had been committed in Srebrenica.

On June 8, 2021, UN tribunal judges upheld in a second-instance trial a verdict sentencing Mladic to life in prison for the genocide, persecution, crimes against humanity, extermination, and other war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina./aa

Global ratings agency Fitch has raised the US' outlook to "stable" from "negative," saying the revision reflects the government’s improved debt dynamics and increased revenues, which Fitch says it expects to expand by 19% in 2022.

"Fitch now forecasts a decline in the general government debt ratio to 113% of GDP, from 118% in 2021 before beginning to rise again at a gradual pace in 2024," according its latest forecasts on Friday.

A stronger-than-expected economic recovery has led public finances to outperform Fitch's expectations, it said, noting that taxes boosted revenues while pandemic-related spending has wound down.

The global agency projected that government deficit at 5% of GDP, down from an estimated 10.2% of GDP in 2021. "State and local governments continue to perform well, and could result in an even lower general government outturn."

Fitch said it expected US growth of 2.9% in 2022, driven by consumption underpinned by continued labor market strength with solid growth in both employment and nominal wages.

However, it underlined, monetary tightening will cause a slowdown.

"High inflation will also begin to impact consumer spending," it said, adding that the economy will narrow in the second half of 2022 and into 2023, with below-trend growth of 1.5% in 2023 and 1.3% in 2024.

Fitch's 2022 and 2023 annual average inflation forecasts have risen to 7.8% and 3.7%, respectively.

The global ratings agency said it expects the Fed to hike rates at a more aggressive pace to around 3% by year end and 3.5% in the first quarter of 2023.

The country's headline consumer price inflation hit 8.6% year-on year in May, the highest since the early 1980s./aa

Intense floods killed dozens of people and left hundreds
homeless in Pakistan, officials said on Saturday, as heavy monsoon
rains battered the country, Trend reports citing Reuters.

In the southern province of Balochistan, 57 people, including
women and children, were killed after being swept away in flood
waters, according to Ziaullah Langove, the disaster and home
affairs advisor to the province’s chief minister, adding that eight
dams had burst due to the heavy rains.

Hundreds more were left homeless after their homes collapsed in
the rain and flooding, he said, adding monsoon rains were
continuing.

In north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province two people,
including a six year-old, died and four were injured when their
house collapsed due to rain, according to a district official
statement.

Heavy rains have lashed the country in recent days, leaving
large swathes of Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, inundated with
water.

In neighbouring Afghanistan, 24 people have been killed by
floods in the east and south of the country, a disaster management
agency spokesman said on Friday./Reuters

Scandinavian airline SAS has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US as a strike by its pilots added to its financial problems.

The move will allow the carrier to continue operating, although the strike has grounded about half its flights.

SAS said the industrial action meant the airline had brought forward plans to restructure its finances.

The aviation sector was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic as demand for travel collapsed.

However, in recent months airlines and airports - which shed thousands of jobs during the pandemic - have struggled to cope with the rebound in air travel.

EasyJet's chief operating officer resigned on Monday after a series of flight cancellations and disruption at the airline in recent weeks.

Some of the disruption in the sector has been caused by staff shortages, but several airlines are facing the threat of strike action over summer as workers push for higher pay.

Funding talks 'advanced'

The Chapter 11 bankruptcy mechanism allows a company to restructure its debts under court supervision while continuing to operate.

SAS said that talks to raise $756m to continue its immediate operations were "well advanced".

Other non-US airlines including Aeromexico and Philippine Airlines have used Chapter 11 protection while they renegotiate contracts and financial arrangements with key suppliers.

"Through this process, SAS aims to reach agreements with key stakeholders, restructure the company's debt obligations, reconfigure its aircraft fleet, and emerge with a significant capital injection," SAS said in a statement.

The airline said that the strike by pilots was "estimated to lead to the cancellation of approximately 50 percent of all scheduled SAS flights," affecting about 30,000 passengers a day.

SAS cut 5,000 jobs - 40% of its workforce - in 2020, as it attempted to reduce losses resulting from the pandemic.

Heavy rains along with flash floods and windstorms claimed 15 more lives across Pakistan over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll since June 1 to nearly 100, authorities and local media reported on Saturday. 

Torrential downpours struck almost the entire country, including the Islamabad-controlled part of the divided Kashmir valley, triggering landslides and flashfloods, and washing away bridges, houses, and animals, mainly in the southwestern Balochistan province and northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, said the National Disaster Management Authority.

Most of the deaths were reported in the commercial capital Karachi, where at least seven people lost their lives in rain-related accidents in the last 24 hours.

Footage on local TV channels showed pedestrians and motorbikes wading through washed-out streets and roads, while four-wheelers were stranded in rainwaters.

Lightning and roof crashes killed eight people in various parts of northeastern Punjab and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, local broadcaster Geo News reported.

The ongoing monsoon spell, which began in early June, has so far killed 98 people across Pakistan, according to official tallies.

Monsoon rains have long wreaked havoc on Pakistan in terms of both human casualties and the destruction of already fragile infrastructure. In recent years climate change has further increased their frequency, ferocity, and unpredictability.

The country has received 87% more rain this monsoon season so far compared to past year’s, according to the Environment and Climate Change Ministry./agencies

Germany's largest Russian gas buyer Uniper on Friday asked the government for a bailout as it has been hit hardest by the Russian gas curtailment amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

"Since mid-June, Uniper has received only 40% of the contracted gas volumes from Russia and has had to source the replacement volumes in the market at significantly higher prices," according to a statement by Finnish majority owner Fortum.

In recent weeks, Fortum has been in talks with the German government on how to stabilize Uniper both regarding its business risks and financial position.

"We welcome that the German Parliament has now approved a toolbox which will allow immediate relief to the effects of the gas supply crisis," said Markus Rauramo, the CEO of Fortum, referring to a newly adopted German energy legislation.

"Next, we look forward to the German government to start promptly implementing these tools to stabilise the situation in the energy industry and in particular at Uniper, as we continue talks on a long-term solution,” he said.

Fortnum said several options are on the table yet no decisions have been made on any possible solution.

The company noted that during the crisis, Fortum has already backed Uniper substantially with a €8 billion (over $8.1 billion) credit facility comprising both shareholder loan and parent company guarantees, which is almost fully drawn by Uniper.

"Fortum is focused on doing its share to stabilise the European gas and electricity markets, as Europe’s economies depend on them," it said, adding that its goal is to find a long-term solution together with the German government that addresses the consequences of a potential prolonged or even expanded gas curtailment.

The German parliament adopted several legislative changes enabling the government with a range of regulatory measures to ensure the security of supply in the current energy crisis, allowing failing companies in the energy industry to obtain liquidity assistance in the form of guarantees, loans, or recapitalization by the German state./aa

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) said on Friday the first cosmic images from the James Webb Space Teles­cope would include unprecedented views of distant galaxies, bright nebulae and a faraway giant gas planet.

The US, European and Canadian space agencies are gearing up for a big revelation on July 12 of early observations by the $10 billion observatory that is set to give new insights into the origins of the universe.

“I’m looking very much forward to not having to keep these secrets anymore, that will be a great relief,” Klaus Pontoppidan, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSI) that oversees Webb, said last week.

An international committee decided the first wave of full-colour scientific images would include the Carina Nebula, an enormous cloud of dust and gas 7,600 light years away, as well as the Southern Ring Nebula, which surrounds a dying star 2,000 light years away.

Carina Nebula is famous for its towering pillars that include “Mystic Mountain”, a three-light-year-tall cosmic pinnacle captured in an iconic image by Hubble.

Webb has also carried out a spectroscopy _ an analysis of light that reveals detailed information _ on a faraway gas giant called WASP-96 b, which was discovered in 2014.

Nearly 1,150 light years from Earth, WASP-96 b is about half the mass of Jupiter and zips around its star in just 3.4 days.

Next comes Stephan’s Quintet, a compact galaxy 290 million light years away. Four of the five galaxies within the quintet are “locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters”, Nasa said.

Finally, and perhaps most enticing of all, Webb has gathered an image using foreground galaxy clusters called SMACS 0723 as a kind of cosmic magnifying glass for extremely distant and faint galaxies behind it.

This is known as “gravitational lensing” and uses the mass of foreground galaxies to bend the light of objects behind them, much like a pair of glasses.

Dan Coe, an astronomer at STSI, said even in its first images, the telescope had broken scientific ground./AFP

Elon Musk on Friday pulled the plug on his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, accusing the social media giant of “misleading” statements about the number of fake accounts, a regulatory filing showed.

Musk’s effort to terminate the deal that he inked in April sets the stage for an epic court battle over a billion-dollar breakup fee and more.

“Mr. Musk hereby exercises (the) right to terminate the Merger Agreement and abandon the transaction,” his lawyers said in a letter to Twitter, a copy of which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Musk’s change of heart appeared to suggest some “buyer’s remorse” for offering a price of $54.20 per share that now appears “laughable,” CFRA Research senior equity analyst Angelo Zino said in a note to investors before the deal was officially nixed.

Twitter has held firm that no more than five percent of accounts are run by software instead of people, while Musk has said he believes the number to be much higher.

Immediately after the news broke, Twitter board chair Bret Taylor vowed to sue Musk to hold him to the terms of the buyout deal, saying “we are confident we will prevail.”

The clock was ticking for Musk to make a decision, with Twitter’s board recommending shareholders approve the buyout at a special vote expected to be held in August.

Musk — the world’s richest man — used a chunk of his fortune in Tesla shares to back loans to buy Twitter, but the tumult and market factors have pushed down the electric car maker’s stock price.

“The Twitter deal has clearly caused chaos at Twitter and has resulted in an overhang on Tesla’s stock since April given the Musk financing angle, coupled by a brutal market backdrop for risk,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors.

“This soap opera has seen many twists and turns… this was always a head scratcher to go after Twitter at a $44 billion price tag for Musk and never made much sense to (Wall) Street, now it ends in a Twilight Zone.”

Concerns about Tesla included worries that its chief executive was being distracted by the Twitter saga, and that the tech platform would certainly demand his attention if he owned it.

“I am sure Musk thought he could come out of the gate strong, generate a wave of buzz and then ride it to get investors who want a piece of something that looks like it is going to be big,” said Angelo Carusone, president of nonprofit group Media Matters for America.

“His erratic behavior obviously affected the price of Tesla shares, which undermined the financing everything was set on.”

Musk, 51, proclaimed in May that he would generally let anyone say anything allowed by law on Twitter, becoming a hero to ultra-conservatives offended by efforts to curb bullying, lies and other abuses on the platform.

His comments came during a key annual event at which Twitter and other social media companies typically lock in bulk ad contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But a Twitter free-for-all would scrap precautions that brands want in place to make sure their ads aren’t associated with abusive or troubling posts, Carusone said.

“Musk got real close to grabbing the brass ring, but couldn’t control himself long enough,” Carusone said. “He opened his mouth and pushed the first domino that has cascaded into blowing up the deal.”

Meanwhile, Musk faces a lawsuit accusing him of pushing down Twitter’s stock price in order to either give himself an escape hatch from his buyout bid./agencies