MONZA (AFP) - Turkey could be stripped of its Formula One Grand Prix following the podium row that erupted at the end of this year’s race, the sport’s world governing body FIA warned yesterday. A spokesman for FIA said Turkey could be barred from hosting Formula One and other sanctioned events over the row, which exploded after Turkish-Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat made the trophy presentation at last month’s event. “It could be the end of FIA-sanctioned events in Turkey,” a spokesman for the governing body told AFP here yesterday. “The Turkish Motorsport Federation also risks being expelled from FIA.”

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia’s two main pro-Western parties, estranged former allies, may be ready to join forces to defeat a rising ultra-nationalist challenge if the West delays a decision on Kosovo until they win an election. The daily Blic quoted an unnamed government source as saying Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and his rival, President Boris Tadic, had sealed a pact to take on the anti-Western, nationalist Radicals and Socialists in a May 2007 ballot. “The only condition for the plan to start being implemented is support of the European Union and the United States... Serb authorities want the future status of Kosovo not to be declared before elections in Serbia,” the daily said.

War criminals are walking free in the former Yugoslavia because their countries refuse to extradite them, the chief UN war crimes prosecutor said yesterday. “There are still hundreds, probably thousands of perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity who are walking freely the streets of the former Yugoslavia,” Carla Del Ponte said, addressing members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. (AP)

A 69-year-old Bulgarian woman died of anthrax after processing and eating meat from an infected sheep but there was no risk of the disease spreading, a state health official said yesterday. The other 14 people who processed the meat, the woman’s family who ate it and hospital staff who took care of her “have shown no symptoms of the disease,” official said. (AFP)

One-hundred-and-seventy foreign inmates in Sofia’s central prison have embarked on protests, including a refusal to eat and work, to demand early release, prison director Mileti Oresharski told AFP yesterday. “We are not convinced that that is a real strike but just an attempt to demonstrate disagreement. The prisoners refuse our food but eat their own. Only seven of them have indeed declared a hunger strike... and some 40 are refusing to work,” Oresharski said. (AFP)