VIENNA (AP) – Unknown assailants threw four firebombs at Turkey’s consulate in the western Austrian city of Bregenz early yesterday, causing a small fire and some smoke damage but no injuries, officials said. Investigators were trying to determine the motive behind the attack, which occurred at around 3.30 a.m. (local time), police said in a statement. Investigators were examining security camera footage that showed four young people throwing the firebombs at the building in Bregenz, a city near the border with Germany.

PRISTINA (Reuters) – A bomb exploded at the offices of a Serb bank in the south of Serbia’s breakaway province of Kosovo late on Tuesday, causing considerable damage but no injuries, police said. The blast targeted a branch of Komercijalna Banka in the town of Dragas, an ethnically mixed region in the southern tip of the ethnic Albanian-majority province. Dragas is mostly populated by a Slavic-speaking Muslim minority seen by ethnic Albanians as being close to the Serb minority and Belgrade.

High winds forced the closure of Black Sea ports in Romania and Bulgaria yesterday, authorities said, as forecasters warned of more heavy snow across the region. Roads also were closed in Romania’s southwest due to snow. Two people in Mehedinti county died early yesterday because ambulances were unable to reach their snowbound villages, Horia Ene, head of the ambulance service, told the Rompres news agency. In Bulgaria, three main Black Sea ports were closed. (AP)

The European Union must solve the status issue of the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo if it is to enhance its credibility abroad, the Austrian chancellor said in an interview published yesterday. The 27-member bloc must show it can “solve problems at home in Europe,” Alfred Gusenbauer told the Austria Press Agency, describing Kosovo as the “last big unsolved issue of the 20th century.” EU leaders have already agreed “to see the final solution on the issue of Kosovo’s status and following consequences as a European challenge,” he noted. (AFP)

An Albanian citizen convicted of murder in Europe has been detained at the US-Canadian border, authorities said. Ndue Harusha was detained by US Customs officials at the Windsor-Detriot Tunnel on December 27 after authorities learned he was wanted for murder on an Interpol warrant. (AP)