BELGRADE (AP) - Fourteen former Serb fighters went on trial yesterday on charges that they killed 70 Croat civilians in 1991 after forcing some of them to walk through a minefield. The group includes former Yugoslav army soldiers and paramilitary fighters suspected of «torture, inhuman treatment and killing» of the Croats in a border town in Croatia during the war there. Croatian investigations have discovered dozens of bodies in mass graves in the village of Lovas, the remains of people apparently killed in October and November 1991 when Serbs controlled the area. The Serbian prosecutors charged the fighters with killing 22 Croats by forcing them to march over a minefield as a human shield.

PHILADELPHIA (AFP) - Democrat Hillary Clinton apologized Wednesday over her false claim that she came under sniper fire during a 1990s trip to Bosnia, but said the incident should not undermine her White House campaign. Going further than her previous statements that she misspoke about Bosnia, the former first lady said during a televised debate with her rival Barack Obama that she was «very sorry» and «embarrassed» about her gunfire mistake. «I can tell you that I may be a lot of things. But I'm not dumb,» she said. »And I have said that, you know, it just didn't jive with what I had written about and knew to be the truth,» Clinton said.

Romania aims to hold on to the controlling stake in a partnership to build two more reactors at its Cernovada nuclear power plant, Economy Minister Varujan Vosganian said yesterday. «We have 2 billion euros ($3.2 billion) from privatizations and we already have experience from building the first two reactors,» Vosganian said. The minister said the government would draw up the statutes for the partnership in the next two weeks, under which the state-owned power company Nuclearelectrica would keep a stake of 51 percent.(AFP)

Turkey's parliament has approved a social security overhaul in a reform backed by the International Monetary Fund. Parliament approved the reform in a vote yesterday, raising the age of retirement to 65, while decreasing pensions. The current retirement age is 58 for women and 60 for men. The country's social security system is bankrupt. But the reform has been criticized by labor unions who say it threatens workers' rights.(AP)

Inflation in Romania is expected to slow after peaking at 8.63 percent in March, the head of the National Bank of Romania, Mugur Isarescu, said yesterday. «March represented the peak in inflation but strong inflationary pressures persist,» the central bank chief said.(AFP)

A Romanian man has been fined for making 6,442 profane phone calls to an emergency number, police said yesterday. The 24-year-old man, who lives in a village in southern Romania, was identified in February and fined 500 lei (140 euros, $223) in April after a checkup showed he was mentally sound, said police.(AP)