BERLIN (AFP) - A young Turkish immigrant accused along with his brothers of killing his sister on a Berlin street confessed yesterday to the crime that has sparked debate about Islamic honor killings in Germany. “I killed my sister. Nobody else in the family helped me,” 19-year-old Ayhan Surucu told a packed court in Berlin through his lawyer. He said he shot dead his 23-year-old sister Hatun, who fled a forced marriage to live as a single mother, because he disapproved of her lifestyle and morals, but that he regretted his actions.

SOFIA (AP) - Private security companies in Southeast European countries are often tied to organized crime or politics, according to a report released yesterday. The report, written by the Britain-based Saferworld think tank in cooperation with experts from the Southeast European countries, analyzed the private security industry in eight countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, and Serbia-Montenegro, including the UN-run region of Kosovo. The report said there were still “problems with the affiliations of private security companies in almost every country or entity in the region, whether to political parties, criminal, paramilitary or ethnic groups, which is a concern.”

Bosnian Serbs rejected plans for a single Bosnian police force yesterday, underlining ethnic divisions, ignoring Western pressure and eroding hopes for talks this year on closer EU ties. The European Commission has said it will not recommend the start of EU association talks until Bosnia’s leaders agree on a politically unbiased and professional police force with no ethnic divisions. (Reuters)

The wife of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic faces a renewed arrest warrant if she fails to appear in a Belgrade court at the start of her trial, court officials said yesterday. The case against Mirjana Markovic is scheduled to start today in the district court in the Serbian capital. (AP)

Croatia has launched a new reality show on the Internet, with sheep instead of people. The winner of the 10-day Stado (herd) show, which closes on Sept. 17, will receive poetry in its honor instead of money. Those voted out of the seven-member herd might be eaten, the Vecernji List daily reported yesterday. The show can be followed 24 hours a day on www.stado.org, where visitors can see how the sheep feed and interact with each other. (Reuters)