Belgrade

Balkan dispute slows clocks: Mainspowered digital clocks across Europe – including those found in ovens, heating systems and radio alarms – are running up to six minutes slow, owing to a dispute between Serbia and Kosovo. Although Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia ten years ago, Belgrade had agreed to meet its electricity needs, to keep the network stable. But long-standing tensions between the two have led to frequent disputes over the implementation of this deal, and since a plant in Kosovo went down in January, Serbia has refused to make up the shortfall. As a result, the grid that supplies 25 countries in continental Europe has been running at an average of 49.996 hertz, rather than the standard 50, and digital clocks that keep time based on the frequency with which alternating current changes direction (50 times per second) have lost six minutes.