TIRANA (AP) - Flooding in southern Albania has blocked roads, toppled a bridge and forced dozens of villagers to evacuate their homes, police said. Three people are believed to have drowned in the flooding, including one woman who is still missing after the car she was in slid into a swollen river. The floodwaters have damaged hundreds of houses at a beach area in Durres, 33 kilometers (20 miles) west of the capital Tirana, police said. Some 10,000 people were left isolated in the Librazhd district, 80km (48 miles) east of Tirana, after floods destroyed a bridge linking the area to the town.

PRISTINA (AP) - The Swedish government gave 320,000 euros ($377,000) yesterday to help move hundreds of war-displaced Roma from lead-contaminated camps in northern Kosovo into a former French military base. The money will be used to help move some 560 Roma living in dire conditions for more than six years from three makeshift camps in Zitkovac, Kablare and Cesmin Lug. The camps are adjacent to an industrial area in northern Kosovo polluted with high lead levels.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will make a lightning visit to Bucharest Tuesday, where she will sign a deal to open “US military facilities” in Romania, the Foreign Ministry announced yesterday. The deal is the first in Washington’s strategy to redeploy some 60,000 to 70,000 personnel from bases in Germany and South Korea to Eastern Europe. The locations of the new US military facilities have not yet been disclosed but sources suggest that the Black Sea air bases of Mihail Kogalniceanu and Fetesti will be used. (AFP)

Bulgarian police detained six people and said they expected more arrests in other countries yesterday after uncovering an international child pornography ring. Officials raided apartments and an Internet provider in Sofia and the central town of Plovdiv, seizing a database containing scenes of violence and sexual abuse against children, the Interior Ministry said. Police, working with the US FBI, seized films, CD-ROMs and more than 30,000 pornographic photos taken in former Soviet bloc countries and the Far East, the ministry said. (Reuters)

Germany has extradited to Croatia an ethnic Serb sentenced by a local court for war crimes committed during the 1991-95 Serbo-Croatian war, police said yesterday. Jovo Begovic, 54, was transferred to Croatia on November 24, the head of police in the central town of Sisak, Marijan Tomurad, told HINA news agency. (AFP)