SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina: An ally of separatist Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik on Sunday was leading the presidential election in the Serb-run half of Bosnia, according to preliminary results released by the Bosnian election authorities.
The snap vote on Sunday in Republika Srpska was held after Dodik was removed from the presidential office over separatist policies that were stoking instability in the ethnically tense Balkan nation.
Dodik’s ally Sinisa Karan won around 50 percent of the ballots while his main opponent Branko Blanusa won around 47 percent, with 92 percent of the votes counted.
Dodik was ousted in August after a Bosnian court convicted him of disobeying the orders of the international High Representative for Bosnia, sentenced him to a year in prison and banned him from holding any public office for six years. He has since paid a fine to avoid jail and stepped aside as president while staying at the helm of his governing Party of Independent Social Democrats.
Dodik on Sunday declared victory for Karan and lashed out at the proceedings that led to his ouster from the presidency.
“They wanted to bring down Dodik in an unfair process and now they got two Dodiks and they will watch us every day,” he said.
Karan added that “we will continue where we left off.”
Blanusa said Sunday night Karan was favored in the official media, although he said earlier in the day that the campaigns were carried out in a “fair and tolerant atmosphere.”
He said that “if there had not been for the manipulations I would have declared victory tonight.”
The office of the High Representative oversees the implementation of the 1995 peace agreement that ended the devastating war in Bosnia.
Bosnian Serbs are in charge of about one-half of Bosnia, which is called Republika Srpska. The other half is run jointly by Bosniaks, who are mainly Muslims and Croats. The two entities are bound together by a central administration.
Four more contenders took part in Sunday’s race.
Bosnia’s complex political structure was established 30 years ago in a US-brokered peace agreement to end a bloody 1992-95 ethnic conflict that killed more than 100,000 people and left millions homeless.
The war started when Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia and the country’s Serbs took up arms to carve up their own territory, hoping to join with neighboring Serbia. Dodik still advocates eventual separation of the Serb-controlled entity from Bosnia, which he has repeatedly declared unviable.
Dodik had faced US and British sanctions for such policies. But the United States lifted the sanctions last month after Dodik agreed to step down. He also has repeatedly clashed with the international envoy overseeing the peace, Christian Schmidt, and declared his decisions illegal in Republika Srpska.
Dodik has actively taken part in Karan’s election campaign. He told voters that “I will remain with you to fight for our political goals” and Karan’s “victory will be my victory too.”
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Ally of separatist leader Dodik leads election race for Bosnian Serb president
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Ally of separatist leader Dodik leads election race for Bosnian Serb president
- The snap vote in Republika Srpska was held after Dodik was removed from the presidential office over separatist policies that were stoking instability
- Bosnian Serbs are in charge of about one-half of Bosnia, which is called Republika Srpska. The other half is run jointly by Bosniaks, who are mainly Muslims and Croats
Zuckerberg says Meta no longer designs apps to maximize screentime
- Meta Platforms CEO faces questioned at a landmark trial over youth social media addiction
- It was the billionaire Facebook founder’s first time testifying in court on Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users
LOS ANGELES: Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed back in court on Wednesday against a lawyer’s suggestion that he had misled Congress about the design of its social media platforms, as a landmark trial over youth social media addiction continues.
Zuckerberg was questioned on his statements to Congress in 2024, at a hearing where he said the company did not give its teams the goal of maximizing time spent on its apps.
Mark Lanier, a lawyer for a woman who accuses Meta of harming her mental health when she was a child, showed jurors emails from 2014 and 2015 in which Zuckerberg laid out aims to increase
time spent on the app by double-digit percentage points. Zuckerberg said that while Meta previously had goals related to the amount of time users spent on the app, it has since changed its approach.
“If you are trying to say my testimony was not accurate, I strongly disagree with that,” Zuckerberg said.
The appearance was the billionaire Facebook founder’s first time testifying in court on Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users.
While Zuckerberg has previously testified on the subject before Congress, the stakes are higher at the jury trial in Los Angeles, California. Meta may have to pay damages if it loses the case, and the verdict could erode Big Tech’s longstanding legal defense against claims of user harm.
The lawsuit and others like it are part of a global backlash against social media platforms over children’s mental health.
Australia has prohibited access to social media platforms for users under age 16, and other countries including Spain are considering similar curbs. In the US, Florida has prohibited companies from allowing users under age 14. Tech industry trade groups are challenging the law in court.
The case involves a California woman who started using Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube as a child. She alleges the companies sought to profit by hooking kids on their services despite knowing social media could harm their mental health. She alleges the apps fueled her depression and suicidal thoughts and is seeking to hold the companies liable.
Meta and Google have denied the allegations, and pointed to their work to add features that keep users safe. Meta has often pointed to a National Academies of Sciences finding that research does not show social media changes kids’ mental health.
The lawsuit serves as a test case for similar claims in a larger group of cases against Meta, Alphabet’s Google, Snap and TikTok. Families, school districts and states have filed thousands of lawsuits in the US accusing the companies of fueling a youth mental health crisis. Over the years, investigative reporting has unearthed internal Meta documents showing the company was aware of potential harm.
Meta researchers found that teens who report that Instagram regularly made them feel bad about their bodies saw significantly more “eating disorder adjacent content” than those who did not, Reuters reported in October.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, testified last week that he was unaware of a recent Meta study showing no link between parental supervision and teens’ attentiveness to their own social media use. Teens with difficult life circumstances more often said they used Instagram habitually or unintentionally, according to the document shown at trial.
Meta’s lawyer told jurors at the trial that the woman’s health records show her issues stem from a troubled childhood, and that social media was a creative outlet for her.
Zuckerberg was questioned on his statements to Congress in 2024, at a hearing where he said the company did not give its teams the goal of maximizing time spent on its apps.
Mark Lanier, a lawyer for a woman who accuses Meta of harming her mental health when she was a child, showed jurors emails from 2014 and 2015 in which Zuckerberg laid out aims to increase
time spent on the app by double-digit percentage points. Zuckerberg said that while Meta previously had goals related to the amount of time users spent on the app, it has since changed its approach.
“If you are trying to say my testimony was not accurate, I strongly disagree with that,” Zuckerberg said.
The appearance was the billionaire Facebook founder’s first time testifying in court on Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users.
While Zuckerberg has previously testified on the subject before Congress, the stakes are higher at the jury trial in Los Angeles, California. Meta may have to pay damages if it loses the case, and the verdict could erode Big Tech’s longstanding legal defense against claims of user harm.
The lawsuit and others like it are part of a global backlash against social media platforms over children’s mental health.
Australia has prohibited access to social media platforms for users under age 16, and other countries including Spain are considering similar curbs. In the US, Florida has prohibited companies from allowing users under age 14. Tech industry trade groups are challenging the law in court.
The case involves a California woman who started using Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube as a child. She alleges the companies sought to profit by hooking kids on their services despite knowing social media could harm their mental health. She alleges the apps fueled her depression and suicidal thoughts and is seeking to hold the companies liable.
Meta and Google have denied the allegations, and pointed to their work to add features that keep users safe. Meta has often pointed to a National Academies of Sciences finding that research does not show social media changes kids’ mental health.
The lawsuit serves as a test case for similar claims in a larger group of cases against Meta, Alphabet’s Google, Snap and TikTok. Families, school districts and states have filed thousands of lawsuits in the US accusing the companies of fueling a youth mental health crisis. Over the years, investigative reporting has unearthed internal Meta documents showing the company was aware of potential harm.
Meta researchers found that teens who report that Instagram regularly made them feel bad about their bodies saw significantly more “eating disorder adjacent content” than those who did not, Reuters reported in October.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, testified last week that he was unaware of a recent Meta study showing no link between parental supervision and teens’ attentiveness to their own social media use. Teens with difficult life circumstances more often said they used Instagram habitually or unintentionally, according to the document shown at trial.
Meta’s lawyer told jurors at the trial that the woman’s health records show her issues stem from a troubled childhood, and that social media was a creative outlet for her.
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