BELGRADE (AP) – Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor has brought charges against four former paramilitary fighters for a massacre of ethnic-Albanian civilians in Kosovo in 1999, the prosecutor’s office said yesterday. The four former members of the notorious Scorpions unit were charged with gunning down a group of 19 civilians, including women, children and the elderly, said the prosecutor’s statement. The killings in the northern town of Podujevo are considered to be one of the worst crimes of Kosovo’s 1998-99 war. Only five children survived the massacre.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Croatia opened talks on new policy chapters with the European Union and held a first round of membership talks with NATO yesterday, taking it two steps closer to the West. The former Yugoslav republic opened chapters on transport and energy with the 27-member EU, marking a fresh start for talks that have been languishing for the last six months. Zagreb was invited to join NATO, along with Albania, at an alliance summit in Romania this month and began the negotiations yesterday in Brussels. A second, final round is scheduled for May, Croatia’s state news agency Hina reported.

A United Nations war crimes court will today deliver its verdict in an appeal case against two former Bosnian Muslim military leaders convicted two years ago of failing to prevent crimes by their soldiers. General Enver Hadzihasanovic, 57, and fellow officer Amir Kubura, 44, were sentenced to five and two-and-a-half years in prison in March 2006 for failing to prevent and punish crimes carried out by troops under their command in central Bosnia. (AFP)

Monica Lovinescu, a Romanian journalist who was an outspoken opponent of the country’s former communist regime, died in France yesterday, the national news agency Rompres reported. She was 85. Lovinescu – who had moved to France in 1947 shortly after communism took power in Romania, and was granted asylum there – died at the Charles Richet Hospital in Val d’Oise, 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Paris, after battling an unspecified illness for three months, Rompres said. President Traian Basescu praised her as an inspiration. (AP)

Turkey’s government says it will again commemorate workers on May 1 after almost 30 years without Labor Day events. But government spokesman Cemil Cicek says May Day won’t be a public holiday. He said yesterday after a cabinet meeting that a demand by trade unions to stage May Day rallies at a main square in Istanbul was also rejected. May Day celebrations at Taksim Square have been banned since 1977, when gunmen opened fire on demonstrators. Thirty-seven people died. (AP)