PHOENIX (AFP) - US authorities on Wednesday announced indictments against 13 Bosnian Serbs for immigration fraud, accusing them of lying about their military service to secure visas to the USA. “These individuals willfully concealed prior service in the military and this raises serious questions about their basic claims to eligibility,” said Roberto Medina, special agent-in-charge at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s office in Arizona. Ranging in age from 34 to 63 years, the accused are ethnic Serbs who allegedly failed to disclose their service in the Bosnian Serb army, which fought against Bosnia’s secession from former Yugoslavia.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey’s Parliament will hold an extraordinary session next Monday to debate terrorism, the assembly’s speaker, Bulent Arinc, said yesterday. The decision followed a request by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which has expressed concern about an upsurge in attacks by Kurdish rebels on security forces and over counter-demonstrations by Turkish nationalists.

A nuclear power plant in southeastern Romania was switched back on after its annual technical inspection, the company that runs the plant said yesterday. The Cernavoda plant’s only working reactor, known as Unit 1, had undergone technical verification and repair work in the past month. It was switched back on late Wednesday. There were no radioactive leaks during the inspection period, officials said. (AP)

The wife of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic failed to return from her self-imposed exile in Russia for her corruption trial yesterday in Belgrade, and the judge immediately ordered her arrest. A previous arrest warrant for Mirjana Markovic, who fled to Russia in 2003, was revoked in June after her lawyer promised she would attend the hearing. (AP)

Forensic experts have begun excavating a new mass grave in northeastern Bosnia believed to contain the remains of some victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, an official said yesterday. “We expect to find several dozen bodies,” a member of Bosnia’s Missing Persons Institute, Murat Hurtic, told AFP. (AFP)