ANKARA (AP) - Prosecutors have charged two senior energy officials and five businessmen with corruption in the allocation of energy contracts, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. The men were taken into custody three days ago as part of a government crackdown on corruption in energy tenders. Three other officials and one businessman were released without charges. Those charged late Saturday include the acting head of a state-owned electricity company as well as his deputy, Anatolia said. Anatolia said the men were charged under legislation to combat organized crime, but gave no other details.

BELGRADE (AFP) - Nine ethnic Albanians have been sentenced to up to 15 years in prison by a Serbian court for the murder of a policeman and “terrorist activities,” Beta news agency reported late on Friday. Two men — Llirim Jakuppi and Beshim Tahiri, both tried in absentia — were handed 15-year sentences for the March 2002 murder of fellow ethnic Albanian Selever Fazliu, a member of Serbia’s special police, the report said. Another seven ethnic Albanians were handed between one and seven year jail terms for “conspiring to form a terrorist group,” the court said.

A US official has been killed in a car accident just outside the Romanian capital of Bucharest, police and media reported on Saturday. Greg Gessner, 55, died late on Friday evening as he was driving toward the airport, police were reported as saying by private news agency Mediafax. An official police statement that described the accident only said that the victim was a US citizen with the initials G.G.W. The US Embassy in Bucharest declined to comment directly on the accident, although another statement from the embassy acknowledged the accident had taken place. (AP)

Turkish police have detained two suspects who have been on the run for nearly 12 years after an arson attack in eastern Turkey that left dozens of liberal Muslims dead, the Anatolia news agency reported on Saturday. The suspects, who were reportedly brothers, were caught in the eastern city of Sivas on arrest warrants issued against them for involvement in the July 2, 1993, arson on the Madimak Hotel in the same city, the agency said. (AFP)

The NATO-led international peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR) has begun distributing humanitarian aid by helicopter to villages in neighboring Albania that have been cut off by heavy snowfall, officials said on Saturday. The Albanian government requested the airlifting of the humanitarian assistance, particularly food and medicine, as two weeks of snow and temperatures around minus 20 degrees Celsius left remote northern villages cut off and in dire need of aid. (AFP)