SOFIA (AFP) – One in every six members of Bulgaria’s post-communist governments was an agent or collaborator of the Communist-era secret services, the committee for the archives said Wednesday. The committee published on the Internet the names of 107 officials of a total of 673 members of all governments since the fall of communism in 1989 who had collaborated with the notorious Darzhavna Sigurnost. The list included Jean Videnov, who was Socialist prime minister from 1995 to 1997, as well as 29 former ministers of foreign affairs, the interior, justice, defense, culture, economy, energy, farming, science, transport and state administration. Seven deputy ministers of the country’s current center-left government were also listed as former secret service agents or collaborators.

BUCHAREST (AFP) – Senators in Romania voted Wednesday to outlaw gay marriage in the country, despite objections from an international rights group, a parliamentary source said. The senate voted to amend the existing law to read that “the family is founded upon free and consensual marriage between a man and a woman” – and not “between spouses,” as had been the case in the law dating back to 1953. Proponents of the change – from both the ruling four-party coalition and the opposition – justified their amendment as “defending the institution of marriage.”

Prisoners in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia risk being kicked and clubbed by police officers and other officials, Europe’s top human rights body said Wednesday, accusing Skopje of failing to end brutality. A report published by the Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee said a significant number of prisoners, including minors, had reported being mistreated by law-and-order officials in some half-dozen prisons and detention sites it visited. In some cases, the alleged victims were abused during grilling sessions that lasted up to 24 hours. (AFP)

Bosnia’s presidency has lost its original copy of the Dayton peace agreement that ended the country’s 1992-1995 war, an official said yesterday. The chairman of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Zeljko Komsic, “discovered yesterday that the original copy of the Dayton peace agreement is missing from the archives of the presidency,” his spokeswoman Irena Kljajic told AFP. Investigators have been called to look into disappearance of the document, she added. (AFP)

A Bosnian driver was so drunk that he should have been dead when arrested with a blood alcohol level 20 times the legal limit, police said yesterday. “I was shocked at the alcohol test results. Most people would slip into a deep coma and die with concentration of 0.4 percent,” police officer Damir Cutura told AFP. After being warned by other drivers on Tuesday of a car zigzagging across lanes, police drove out and arrested Branko Milicevic near the southern town of Citluk. (AFP)