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"Melania" appeared on the banks of the River Sava in July 2020, four months before her human inspiration left the White House.

Waking up that morning at her home in Kvar Sava, 25 minutes from Tel Aviv, she was shaken to her core and began to contemplate her mortality: “I became very emotional, and I started thinking, ‘What happens if I die tomorrow?

In the Diana and Sava regions in the north, bridges and roads were washed away and houses and rice fields were submerged.

Orthodox believers in Serbia marked the day by burning oak branches at services outside churches and temples, including hundreds who gathered at the St. Sava Temple — the biggest Orthodox church in the Balkans.

To explore the population history of the Balkans and examine the influence of the rise and fall of the Roman empire, the researchers extracted DNA from 136 ancient individuals excavated from 20 different sites across the Balkans -- defined as the region bounded by the Adriatic, Central Mediterranean, and Aegean Seas and the Middle and Lower Danube and Sava Rivers.