BUCHAREST (AFP) - Some 20 foreign couples want to take up permanent residence in Romania so they can adopt children, after a 2001 moratorium put a stop to international adoptions, a Romanian adoption official said yesterday. The couples are already foster parents who “have been entrusted with Romanian children for several years. Over time, a deep affection has been established between the foreigners and the children,” said Theodora Bertzi, head of the Romanian office for adoptions.

DIYARBAKIR (AFP) - A homemade bomb ripped through a police station in the mainly Kurdish east of Turkey yesterday, causing material damage but no casualties, local security sources said. The bomb exploded on the ground floor of the building in the city of Van, causing damage to the walls and ceiling and leading to its evacuation, the sources said. Police suspect the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) set up the explosion.

Bulgaria has uncovered and charged an armed gang with plotting a string of bloody assassinations, officials said yesterday, as authorities stepped up a crackdown on organized crime, which is threatening its 2007 EU membership. Following the murder of a top banker last week, police swept through gangster hideouts, arresting more than 140 people with suspected links to the Balkan state’s teeming underworld, they said. Prosecutors also said they have charged five men for plotting to extend a string of gangland hits that have killed and wounded more than 120 people since 2000.

A gag order on former Kosovo prime minister and ex-guerrilla commander Ramush Haradinaj has been extended, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said yesterday. Haradinaj, 36, remains barred from making public speeches or participating in political meetings after the court ordered the ban to be continued until November 21. (AFP)

Two swans have tested positive for H5N1 in Croatia, a week after being found near an area where six other swans were found with the deadly strain of bird flu, the Agriculture Ministry said yesterday. A British laboratory last week confirmed that six swans found on October 22 in the Zdenci nature park in eastern Croatia carried the H5N1 strain. It was the first confirmation of H5N1 in Croatia. (AP)

Two moderate earthquakes jolted Turkey’s third-largest city of Izmir yesterday, a seismology center said, the latest in a series of tremors in the Aegean Sea that have sent terrified residents into the streets in panic. The quakes, with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8 and 4.2 were centered off the town of Seferihisar in the Aegean Sea and struck at 7.26 a.m. (local time) and 8.48 a.m, the Istanbul-based Kandilli Observatory said. There were no immediate reports of any damage or injuries. (AP)