COPENHAGEN (AP) - Denmark’s premier expressed shock that 56 mayors in Turkey were under investigation for urging him to resist pressure from Ankara to close down an allegedly pro-rebel Kurdish TV station in the Scandinavian country, according to comments broadcast yesterday. The mayors from Turkey’s troubled Kurdish-populated southeast had sent a letter to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, asking him to keep the Roj TV station in Denmark on the air despite claims from Turkey it was a mouthpiece for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. “I find it rather shocking... that because you write a letter to me, you are being accused of violating the law,” Fogh Rasmussen told Danish public radio. “It is shocking that this can take place in a country which is seeking EU membership.”

BUCHAREST (AFP) - US military planes allegedly used by the CIA to transfer suspected terrorists made stopovers in Romania “only for technical reasons,” according to a report presented yesterday by the Romanian parliamentary committee investigating the alleged CIA flights. “The flights mentioned in the report by Council of Europe parliamentarian Dick Marty made stopovers in Romania only for technical reasons, to allow refueling of the aircraft or rest for the crew,” Norica Nicolai, the head of the Romanian committee, said. According to Nicolai, “no passenger left or came on board these aircraft” during the stopovers.

Balkan countries need to do more to protect the Roma community and must hand over indicted war criminals if they are to continue on the path to joining the European Union and NATO, US officials and experts said. At a hearing before the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, several witnesses on Thursday noted that countries such as Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia have made some progress in implementing democratic reforms and improving human rights. But they underlined that ethnic minorities, especially the Roma community, remain vulnerable to discrimination and violence. (AFP)

Police in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia said yesterday they arrested a group of 108 illegal immigrants from neighboring Albania. The immigrants, men aged from 18 to 50, were detained near the town of Gostivar, some 70km southwest of the capital Skopje, where they had intended to find work, said police. (AFP)

Seventy goats were killed when lightning struck near the central Bulgarian village of Sennik Thursday, but the 38-year-old goatherd by their side escaped with his life, the state civil protection agency said yesterday. The shepherd was trying to gather his herd of 100 goats when lightning struck the tree under which the wet animals had sought shelter. (AFP)