Tragicomic Serbia.

Flooding forces state of emergency in ten Serbian regions

Sirens sounded an alarm in the eastern town of Golubac after the Danube river flooded the city center, forcing Serbia to declare a state of emergency here and nine other regions throughout the country.

Water inundated the bus station, school, hotel and pedestrian zone in the center of Golubac, the town where the Danube forms a natural border with Romania.

The levels of the Danube are at an 111-year high. The area has declared a state of emergency, but Yahoo! News leaves us on a lighter note:

Srdan Jovanovic, chief of the capital's flood defense team, also made a special appeal to young women in Belgrade.

He asked that the women who go out to Belgrade's famous float-clubs to stop walking over the sandbags and avoid making holes in them with their high-heeled shoes.

I guess not everyone thinks the floods are such a bad thing:



In other news from Serbia:

A Serbian prisoner using needle, thread and safety pins stitched his lips and tongue together to avoid a scheduled court hearing in his robbery case, the Blic newspaper reported Saturday.

Sounds like the poor fellow was trying to obstruct his own testimony. Experts knew better and reversed the prisoner's unspeakable condition, but in the end the prisoner won out:

A prison surgeon was called in and removed the self-inflicted stitches, but Raskovic, who had lost some blood, subsequently was too weak to appear in court Friday.