BELGRADE (AP) - A shooting during tense local elections in southern Serbia yesterday left a candidate dead, three other people injured and prompted appeals for calm by the country’s president, authorities said. Gunmen opened fire from a passing car at a polling station in the city of Novi Pazar, 175 kilometers (110 miles) south of Belgrade, killing Ruzdo Durovic and wounding his brother Sulejman and two passers-by, police and local officials said. The city is the center of the Sandzak region, which has a large Muslim community. Recent friction between two rival Muslim political groups led to the early vote for control of the municipal assembly.

ISTANBUL (AP) - Police in Istanbul arrested two alleged Kurdish rebels suspected of orchestrating two bombings earlier this year and of planning another in Turkey. When police went to detain them in Istanbul’s low-income Esenyurt neighborhood, the men threw a hand grenade and opened fire on the officers, but there were no injuries, the state-owned Anatolia news agency reported. The men, both Turkish citizens, are suspected in last month’s bombing of a government office in Istanbul and the April bombing at a governing party office, anti-terrorism police said in a statement. Eight people were injured in the two attacks.

A government official urged Serbia’s pro-Western parties on Saturday to work together to prevent a return to power by loyalists of former president Slobodan Milosevic. Finance Minister Mladjan Dinkic told members of his G17 Plus party that Serbia faced a “real danger” of a resurgence of the nationalism that marked the Balkan wars of the 1990s. “Those who think that there is no danger for Serbia to move backward are mistaken,” Dinkic said. “Populism, chauvinism and hate speech... are a real danger.” (AP)

US actor Richard Gere arrived in Bosnia on Saturday to begin shooting a Hollywood thriller about the hunt for Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian-Serb leader and war crimes fugitive. Gere will play a journalist trying to seek out Karadzic, who is wanted on war crimes charges. The Hollywood heartthrob told reporters at Sarajevo airport that he had accepted the role in Richard Shepard’s ”Flak Jacket” because it was ”a very good script.” Filming is due to start tomorrow and Gere is expected to work here for 10 days. (AFP)