ANKARA (AP) – Doctors are treating some 700 students for apparent food poisoning, the state-run Anatolia news agency said yesterday. The children have been taken to local hospitals in the western province of Balikesir after vomiting following lunch that included chicken, the agency said.

STRASBOURG (AFP) – The Council of Europe’s anti-torture body urged Turkey yesterday to end the solitary confinement of jailed Kurd rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, highlighting the threat to his mental health. However, observers from the European rights watchdog rejected suggestions by Ocalan’s relatives that he had been poisoned, after visiting him on the Turkish prison island of Imrali.

Bulgaria will ban smoking and flammable items on trains and upgrade emergency procedures after a fire swept through two sleeper carriages last week, killing nine people, the transport minister said yesterday. The fire on February 28 was the worst railway incident in Bulgaria since 1992. It has provoked debate about safety standards at state railway company BDZ and led to calls for Transport Minister Petar Mutafchiev to resign. (Reuters)

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found Bulgaria guilty yesterday of breaching the rights of a prisoner accused of rape, after he spent nearly two years on remand in a tiny, windowless cell. Nikolay Kirilov Gavazov was in Pazardjik prison in central Bulgaria from December 1998 to November 2000 on rape charges. He complained to the ECHR about the inhumane and degrading conditions of his detention, citing the size of his cell, the lack of sanitation, fresh air, or daylight and the poor diet and lack of exercise. The court gave Gavazov 6,000 euros in damages, finding that Bulgaria had breached Article 3 of the Convention on Human Rights, banning inhumane and degrading treatment, causing him distress beyond that expected of simple incarceration. (AFP)

A Romanian court has awarded 500,000 euros (US $760,000) to an ex-political prisoner and former presidential hopeful in one of the first compensation payouts to those held by the former communist regime, he confirmed yesterday. Lucian Orasel, 68, served nearly eight years in jail as one of the country’s youngest political prisoners after he was arrested in Bucharest in 1956, the daily Adevarul said. Orasel, who was thwarted from running as president in 2000, was accused of being “an agitator against the Socialist order” after he sent a memo to the US Embassy about abuses committed by the communists who came to power in 1947. (AP)

Bulgaria plans to lay off some 8,000 army staff to streamline its armed forces and provide better pay for the military, Defense Minister Veselin Bliznakov said yesterday. (Reuters)