Bogged down on Kosovo
The week's news at a glance.
Vienna
Serbian and Kosovar leaders met for the first time this week, at an international conference on the status of Kosovo that went nowhere. The republic, administered by the U.N., is still technically a province of Serbia, four years after NATO expelled marauding Serbian troops who were trying to drive out the ethnic Albanian Kosovars. The former enemies refused to shake hands, and neither side budged from its position. Serbia still wants sovereignty over the province, while Kosovo is demanding full independence. The European officials who brokered the meeting said that just getting the Serbs and Kosovars to sit across a table was progress. “Did we expect anything spectacular?” asked E.U. External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten. “No. They got into the same room and started talking.”
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Citizenship: Trump order blocked again
Feature After the Supreme Court restricted nationwide injunctions, a federal judge turned to a class action suit to block Trump's order to end birthright citizenship
-
Loyalty tests: The purge at the FBI
Feature Kash Patel is conducting polygraph tests on FBI agents to weed out anyone speaking badly about him
-
The all-seeing tech giant
Feature Palantir's data-mining tools are used by spies and the military. Are they now being turned on Americans?