PETRICH (AFP) - Thousands of Bulgarian hunters embarked Saturday on a nationwide out-of-season campaign to cull ever-increasing numbers of wolves, foxes and golden jackals driven by cold weather to prey on farm livestock. “The permission to hunt, even if only for a day, was rather necessary in our region,” said Dimitar Kitanov, local hunt master in this southwestern district. “People are afraid they might be attacked while at work,” he said. Over 2,230 wolves were counted in the latest game tally in Bulgaria, an 11 percent increase since 2003. The fox population has reached 36,500 and golden jackals number more than 27,000, according to the Forestry and Agriculture Ministry.

BELGRADE (AFP) - An ethnic Hungarian family of six killed in their home in a northern Serbian town last month were murdered by a criminal gang, an official statement said Friday. The victims, including two children and their grandparents, were found in neighboring houses in the town of Horgos, on the border between Serbia and Hungary, on February 1. The family, reportedly among the richest in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, were killed around January 24 “by an organized gang of criminals,” the statement by prosecutors investigating the case said.

Newscasts and media commentators reacted with shock Saturday to bitter personal attacks by lawmakers during a debate on former President Slobodan Milosevic. Commentators reeled at how legislators had called each other “dogs” and “liars,” and how some made obscene gestures at others. The friction started after the ultra-nationalist Radical Party, backed by Milosevic’s Socialists, proposed a draft bill for Parliament to declare an end to the “political persecution” of Milosevic’s family members. (AP)

Turkish police have intercepted 108.5 kilograms (238.7 pounds) of heroin hidden in a truck headed for neighboring Greece, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. The drugs seized at the Ipsala border crossing with Greece had a street value of nearly 13 million new Turkish lira (US$10 million, 7.65 million euros), Anatolia said. It did not say when the raid took place and police officials could not be reached for comment yesterday. Police detained two people the agency added. (AP)

Spain will remove next month a ship loaded with cancer-causing waste that sank in September off the coast of southern Turkey, the Turkish environment minister said yesterday. The vessel, the MV Ulla, registered in the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent, has been rusting off the Turkish coast since February 2000 with a load of 2,200 tons of ash from coal-fired power stations in Spain, after Algeria — its original destination — refused to take the cargo. (AFP)