ISTANBUL (AFP) - Turkish police have arrested a member of a controversial business family as part of an investigation into alleged financial irregularities at their former flagship bank. The arrest of Bahattin Uzan — the brother of the patriarchal head, Kemal Uzan — could prove even more damaging to the wealthy family which is under a judicial siege over the troubled Imar Bank. He is the first Uzan to be arrested since authorities launched an investigation into Imar Bank and a hunt for several family members after it was seized by the State in July for violations of the banking law.

ANKARA (AFP) - Bare-chested boys with razor scars on their bodies greeted two MPs in a squalid juvenile ward when they paid an unannounced visit to a jail in western Turkey, one of the legislators said yesterday, raising alarm over the EU-hopeful country’s progress on human rights. Faruk Unsal, a member of Parliament’s human rights commission, and his colleague Cavit Torun, are now penning a report on their grim findings at two juvenile wards in a prison in Aydin province and expect authorities to take urgent action. “The boys told us that they cut themselves with razors in order to stop prison guards from beating them,” Unsal told AFP.

NATO peacekeepers from Sweden accidentally shot a pedestrian in the head with a shotgun pellet while attempting to kill stray dogs near Kosovo’s capital, an alliance spokesman said yesterday. The pedestrian was not seriously injured Thursday when the pellet ricocheted off a wall and struck him in the eye on a road near Pristina, said Wing Commander Chris Thompson, a spokesman for the peacekeepers. The peacekeepers shoot stray dogs due to health concerns. (AP)

Forensic experts at Bosnia’s largest known mass grave have found the bodies of four children among the remains of 428 people exhumed so far, officials said yesterday. The mass grave was opened in late July on Crni Vrh Hill, near the border with Serbia, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Sarajevo. (AP)

Turkey yesterday warned its main regional ally Israel that its decision to expel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would torpedo the troubled peace process in the volatile Middle East. The Israeli decision “is a genuinely worrying decision because it is a decision that completely damages the very roots of peace in the region,” Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said. “It is a fact that Arafat is the elected leader of the Palestinian people... It is necessary to act very carefully so as not to drag the region into more chaos,” he added. (AFP)