On the list of famous Serbs, there are soccer stars, tennis champions and notorious politicians. And then there's Vesna Vulovic.
Vulovic was a 22-year-old stewardess aboard a Yugoslav Airlines flight in 1972 when a bomb blew the plane to bits high above the snowy mountain ranges of Czechoslovakia.
Trapped in the plane's tail cone, she plummeted 10,000m to earth in temperatures of minus 60?C and landed on a steep heavily wooded slope near the village of Srbska Kamenice.
Amazingly, she survived.
An instant national heroine, she went on to put her celebrity at the service of political causes, protesting strongman Slobodan Milosevic's rule in the 1990s and most recently campaigning for liberal forces in upcoming elections.
The May ballot promises to determine whether Serbia moves forward in its bid to join the EU or sinks deeper into isolation as it defies international pressure to accept Kosovo's independence.
"I struggled against Milosevic's regime in the 1990s because I didn't want Serbia to be a pariah state, and I'll do the same this time because I want us to be part of the normal world," she said.
Vulovic's fame spread beyond Serb borders.
In 1985, she was inducted into the Guinness Book of Records for "the highest fall survived without a parachute."
Vulovic, 58, is even said to be a possible inspiration for the opening scene of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, which describes the two protagonists surviving a high-altitude fall from an airliner blown up by terrorists.
"She is one of the most famous Yugoslavs ever," said Cedomir Janjic, former head of the Yugoslav Air Force Museum. "She's certainly the luckiest."
On that fateful January day, Vulovic tumbled through pine branches and into a thick coating of snow, softening the impact and cushioning her descent down the hill.
All 27 of the other passengers and crew aboard the Douglas DC-9 aircraft perished after the blast detached the cockpit from the fuselage.
The front section, which was found 7km from the main wreckage, contained the bodies of the two pilots who had donned oxygen masks and tried to fly the plane after the explosion -- possibly unaware that nothing remained behind their cockpit door.
Croatian nationalists were blamed for planting the explosives during a scheduled stopover in Copenhagen, Denmark, but no arrests were ever made.
Villagers said they saw a flash in the sky and heard the sound of bodies falling to the ground "like sacks."
Vulovic was rescued by a woodsman who followed her screaming voice in the dark forest. She was rushed to a hospital, where she fell into a deep coma that lasted for 10 days. In all, she fractured her skull, crushed two vertebrae and broke her pelvis, several ribs and both legs.
Paralyzed from the waist down, Vulovic eventually recovered and even returned to work for the airline in a desk job. She now walks with a slight limp.
But she has never regained memory of the accident or her rescue and could only recall greeting arriving passengers before takeoff from the airport in Copenhagen, Denmark -- and then waking up in hospital with her mother at her side.
During the Milosevic regime, she braved repeated attacks by the riot police after she joined the opposition Democratic Party.
As part of a reformist coalition, the Democrats won elections in 2000, forcing Milosevic from power. She's still an activist of the Democratic Party, but holds no political posts.
"I thought I was done with politics, but the choice now is too stark," Vulovic said. "I don't assume [I] will make a huge difference, but every little bit will help."
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to