BELGRADE (AP) - Criminal charges were filed yesterday against nine people accused of helping UN war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic evade justice, a Belgrade prosecutor said. The nine were indicted for “hiding and helping hide Mladic although they knew that he was charged” with war crimes, said the prosecutor’s statement, carried by the Beta news agency. The statement also said that any court trying the nine should take into account the “social peril that resulted from the criminal act,” and the consequences to Serbia’s international position.

TUCSON, Arizona (AP) - A University of Arizona assistant professor has been charged in Turkey with “insulting Turkishness” and could face a prison sentence. Elif Shafak, who is a Turkish citizen, said she will stand trial because of the words uttered by fictional Armenian characters in her novel “The Bastard of Istanbul” - a book she wrote while she was living in the American city. In the book, an Armenian character refers to “Turkish butchers.” Shafak, 35, said her book was released in Turkey on March 8 and has already sold more than 50,000 copies.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul yesterday called on all sides in the Middle East to speedily cease fire before it is too late, while thousands of demonstrators condemned Israel. “A deep instability can occur in the region. The first thing to do is to cease fire immediately and calmly seek ways out of this,” Gul told reporters. Otherwise, Gul said, violence could dramatically escalate, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported. (AP)

Forensic experts so far have exhumed more than 400 bodies of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre from the biggest relocated mass grave in Bosnia, the team leader said yesterday. Excavations on the mass grave began in June in the vicinity of the eastern Bosnian village of Kamenica, near the border with Serbia, and so far 417 bodies have been taken out, said the head of the forensic team, Murat Hurtic. The number is not final and the team will continue excavating. (AP)

European Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou expressed concern yesterday at an epidemic of swine fever which has affected central and northern Romania for the past two years. He told a press conference Brussels would be sending teams of experts to study the situation before September. Romanian Agriculture Minister Gheorghe Flutur said the number of outbreaks of the disease had been reduced from 1,500 last year to 65, and it was hoped to eradicate it by the end of the year. But he warned that it could break out again at any time, with small breeders raising more than four million pigs. (AFP)