Foreign aid arrives amid Balkans’ floods
Serbia, Bosnia reeling both economically and physically
BELGRADE, Serbia — International aid from the Baltics to the Bosporus began flowing to Serbia and Bosnia after the Balkan nations’ worst flooding on record swamped towns and farms, leaving 37 dead and thousands homeless.
The United Nations flew lifesaving equipment to Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, shortly before midnight, and another plane with emergency food and water supplies was dispatched, the Serbian Interior Ministry said in an emailed statement yesterday.
The European Union deployed more relief workers and equipment than the two countries asked for as the situation worsened, and it said cash aid will follow once damage is assessed.
Serbia declared a state of emergency on Thursday after floods left 19 dead in the largest former Yugoslav republic, 17 in neighboring Bosnia and one in Croatia. Governments are still calculating the impact, and Serbia has turned to Russia and the European Union for emergency assistance. Floodwaters ruined homes, roads, dams, railroads and crops of wheat and corn.
“The impact on the Serbian budget will be huge, as the government will have to increase spending and will be forced to redefine its priorities, for this year at least,” Ivan Nikolic, a member of the advisory council to the central-bank governor, said yesterday. “The austerity program they planned just days ago will no longer be possible.”
Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic had planned
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According to the report, which was released by U.S. security firm Mandiant, the attacks were coming from Chinese hacking groups known to many of their victims in the U.S. as the “Comment Crew” or “Shanghai Group.”
At a news conference in Washington, senior Justice Department officials said that China should send the defendants — Wang Dong, Sun Kailiang, Wen Xinyu, Huang Zhenyu and Gu Chunhui — to the United States to face trial. Those demands, however, were largely symbolic. The Chinese government, which said yesterday that the allegations were made up, is unlikely to turn them over.
John Carlin, an assistant attorney general for national security, said the men had “targeted the U.S. private sector for commercial advantage.”
“We allege that members of unit 61398 conspired to hack into computers of six U.S. victims to steal information that would provide an economic advantage to the victims’ competitors, including Chinese stateowned enterprises,” Carlin said.
In response to the charges, the Chinese government said that its military has never been involved in stealing trade secrets.
“The U.S., fabricating facts and using so-called stealing network secrets as an excuse, announced indictments against five Chinese military officers,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said. “This is a serious violation of basic norms of international relations and damages Sino-U.S. cooperation and mutual trust.”
China has “lodged a protest” with the United States and “urges the U.S. to immediately correct its error and revoke its so-called indictment,” the ministry said.
According to the statement, China also has decided to suspend activities of a ChineseAmerican Internet working group, “given the U.S. lack of sincerity in resolving Internet-security issues through dialogue and cooperation.”
The Justice Department said the men were indicted on May 1 by a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania on charges of conspiring to commit computer fraud and accessing a computer without authorization for the purpose of commercial advantage.
In March, it was revealed that the National Security Agency had created a back door into the computer networks of Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications giant that is considered a threat. The NSA has also tracked more than 20 Chinese hacking groups that have broken into U.S. government networks and companies.