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Tomislav Damnjanovic
Tomislav Damnjanovic is a Serbian businessman and arms smuggler. A former employee of Yugoslavia's national airline, Damnjanovic founded his own company transporting supplies aboard an Ilyushin Il-76 freight carrier. With increasing United Nations sanctions on Yugoslavian airlines, he began to expand his operations into illegal smuggling. He attained notoriety in 2002 when he was contracted to deliver "millions of rounds of ammunition, guns, grenades and mortars" to aid the US military during the ongoing War In Iraq and War in Afghanistan. At the time, United Nations officials investigating his previous activities discovered a 15 year history of weapons deals with Libyan, Liberian, Republic of the Congo officials as well as Al Qaeda-linked Islamist groups in Somalia and other smuggling deals backed Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.Wood, NicholasFor Balkan Shipping Agent, War Is Good for Business New York Times. Retrieved May 8, 2012. The United Nations claimed that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serbia
Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hungary to the north, Romania to the northeast, Bulgaria to the southeast, North Macedonia to the south, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to the west, and Montenegro to the southwest, and claims a border with Albania through the Political status of Kosovo, disputed territory of Kosovo. Serbia without Kosovo has about 6.7 million inhabitants, about 8.4 million if Kosvo is included. Its capital Belgrade is also the List of cities in Serbia, largest city. Continuously inhabited since the Paleolithic Age, the territory of modern-day Serbia faced Slavs#Migrations, Slavic migrations in the 6th century, establishing several regional Principality of Serbia (early medieval), states in the early Middle Ages at times recognised as tributaries to the B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Somalia
Somalia, , Osmanya script: 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘𐒕𐒖; ar, الصومال, aṣ-Ṣūmāl officially the Federal Republic of SomaliaThe ''Federal Republic of Somalia'' is the country's name per Article 1 of thProvisional Constitution, (; ), is a country in the Horn of Africa. The country is bordered by Ethiopia to the west, Djibouti to the northwest, the Gulf of Aden to the north, the Indian Ocean to the east, and Kenya to the southwest. Somalia has the longest coastline on Africa's mainland. Its terrain consists mainly of plateaus, plains, and highlands. Hot conditions prevail year-round, with periodic monsoon winds and irregular rainfall. Somalia has an estimated population of around million, of which over 2 million live in the Capital city, capital and largest city Mogadishu, and has been described as Africa's most culturally homogeneous country. Around 85% of its residents are ethnic Somalis, who have historically inhabited the country's north. Ethnic minoritie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victor Bout
Viktor Anatolyevich Bout (; russian: link=no, Виктор Анатольевич Бут; born 13 January 1967) is a Russian arms dealer. A weapons manufacturer and former Soviet military translator, he used his multiple companies to smuggle arms from Eastern Europe to Africa and the Middle East during the 1990s and early 2000s. Bout gained the nicknames the "Merchant of Death" and "Sanctions Buster" after British minister Peter Hain read a report to the United Nations in 2003 on Bout's wide-reaching operations, extensive clientele, and willingness to bypass embargoes. In a US sting operation Bout was arrested in 2008 in Thailand on terrorism charges by the Royal Thai Police in cooperation with American authorities and Interpol. The United States Ambassador to Thailand Eric G. John requested his extradition to the United States, which was eventually mandated by the Thai High Court in 2010. Bout was accused of intending to sell arms to a United States Drug Enforcement Administr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mogadishu
Mogadishu (, also ; so, Muqdisho or ; ar, مقديشو ; it, Mogadiscio ), locally known as Xamar or Hamar, is the capital and most populous city of Somalia. The city has served as an important port connecting traders across the Indian Ocean for millennia, and has an estimated population of 2,388,000 (2021). Mogadishu is located in the coastal Banadir region on the Indian Ocean, which unlike other Somali regions, is considered a municipality rather than a (federal state). Mogadishu has a long history, which ranges from the ancient period up until the present, serving as the capital of the Sultanate of Mogadishu in the 9th-13th century, which for many centuries controlled the Indian Ocean gold trade, and eventually came under the Ajuran Empire in the 13th century which was an important player in the medieval Silk Road maritime trade. Mogadishu enjoyed the height of its prosperity during the 14th and 15th centuries and was during the early modern period considered th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, . Due to the lack of standardization of transcribing written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been romanized in various ways. A 1986 column by '' The Straight Dope'' lists 32 spellings known from the US Library of Congress, while ABC identified 112 possible spellings. A 2007 interview with Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi confirms that Saif spelled his own name Qadhafi and the passport of Gaddafi's son Mohammed used the spelling Gathafi. According to Google Ngram the variant Qaddafi was slightly more widespread, followed by Qadhafi, Gaddafi and Gadhafi. Scientific romanizations of the name are Qaḏḏāfī (DIN, Wehr, ISO) or (rarely used) Qadhdhāfī ( ALA-LC). The Libyan Arabic pronunciation is (eastern dialects) or (western dialects), hence the frequent quasi-phonemic romanization Gaddafi for the latter. In English, it is pronounced or . (, 20 October 2011) was a Libyan revolutionary, politician and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burma
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, John Wells explains, the English spellings of both Myanmar and Burma assume a non-rhotic variety of English, in which the letter r before a consonant or finally serves merely to indicate a long vowel: [ˈmjænmɑː, ˈbɜːmə]. So the pronunciation of the last syllable of Myanmar as [mɑːr] or of Burma as [bɜːrmə] by some speakers in the UK and most speakers in North America is in fact a spelling pronunciation based on a misunderstanding of non-rhotic spelling conventions. The final ''r'' in ''Myanmar'' was not intended for pronunciation and is there to ensure that the final a is pronounced with the broad a, broad ''ah'' () in "father". If the Burmese name my, မြန်မာ, label=none were spelled "Myanma" in English, this would b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Taylor (Liberian Politician)
Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor (born 28 January 1948) is a former Liberian politician and convicted warlord who served as the 22nd president of Liberia from 2 August 1997 until his resignation on 11 August 2003, as a result of the Second Liberian Civil War and growing international pressure. Born in Arthington, Montserrado County, Liberia, Taylor earned a degree at Bentley College in the United States before returning to Liberia to work in the government of Samuel Doe. After being removed for embezzlement and imprisoned in Massachusetts by President Doe, Taylor would escape prison in 1989. He eventually arrived in Libya, where he was trained as a guerrilla fighter. He returned to Liberia in 1989 as the head of a Libyan-backed rebel group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, to overthrow the Doe government, initiating the First Liberian Civil War (1989–1996). Following Doe's execution, Taylor gained control of a large portion of the country and became one of the mos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organization, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party—which espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism—Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup (later referred to as the 17 July Revolution) that brought the party to power in Iraq. As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time when many groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government, Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflicts between the government and the armed forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam nationalised the Iraq Petroleum Company and independent banks, eventually leaving the banking system insolve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine United States Minor Outlying Islands, Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in Compact of Free Association, free association with three Oceania, Pacific Island Sovereign state, sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Palau, Republic of Palau. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders Canada–United States border, with Canada to its north and Mexico–United States border, with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the List of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Islamic Courts Union
The Islamic Courts Union ( so, Midowga Maxkamadaha Islaamiga) was a legal and political organization formed to address the lawlessness that had been gripping Somalia since the fall of the Siad Barre regime in 1991 during the Somali Civil War. The Islamic Courts Union was embraced by a plurality of Somalis, as Islam was viewed as one of the last credible institutions left in the wake of the collapse of the state. The courts were able to quickly gain the trust of war weary Somalis, as they had emerged at a grassroots level and claimed to rule under the neutrality of Islam, which was viewed as an attractive alternative to the country rife with heightened clan tensions. The union was a diffuse organization, with rivaling leaders sending conflicting messages about the group's goals. Some members had national political ambitions, while others wanted to focus on resolving local disputes and bringing people closer to Islam. In the summer of 2006, the ICU would expel an alliance of So ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slobodan Milosevic
Slobodan ( sr-Cyrl, Слободан) is a Serbo-Croatian masculine given name which means "free" (''sloboda'' / meaning "freedom, liberty") used among other South Slavs as well. It was coined by Serbian liberal politician Vladimir Jovanović who, inspired by John Stuart Mill's essay '' On Liberty'' baptised his son as Slobodan in 1869 and his daughter Pravda (Justice) in 1871. It became popular in both Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–1945) and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945–1991) among various ethnic groups within Yugoslavia and therefore today there are also Slobodans among Croats, Slovenes and other Yugoslav peoples. During the decade after World War II, the name Slobodan (means "freedom") became the most popular Serbian male name, and it remained so until 1980. Common derived nicknames are Sloba, Slobo, Boban, Boba, Bobi and Čobi. The feminine counterpart is Slobodanka. It may refer to: *Slobodan Aligrudić (1934–1985), Serbian actor * Slobo Ilije ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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