BELGRADE – Serbia has issued an international arrest warrant for the widow of former president Slobodan Milosevic on charges she headed a cigarette-smuggling ring, a local daily reported yesterday. The warrant for Mira Markovic, 64, was placed with Interpol by Serbia’s special court for organized crime, said the Danas newspaper, citing local police and judicial sources. A similar arrest warrant was also being planned for her son, Marko Milosevic, who along with Markovic is believed to be living in hiding in Russia, it said.

BUCHAREST (AFP) – Romania is trying to evacuate about 30 of its citizens, most of them women and children, from the Gaza Strip following Hamas’s seizure of the territory, the Foreign Ministry said late on Thursday. “The Romanian Embassy in Tel Aviv is taking the necessary action to get approval for Romanian citizens who have asked to evacuate Gaza to fly out from Israel, or for transit through Israel,” the ministry said in statement. “The Israeli security checks necessary for this are being carried out,” it added, explaining that 31 Romanians had so far asked for help to leave Gaza. The ministry has urged all Romanians there – it does not know how many there are –to contact the embassy in Tel Aviv.

A UN court in Kosovo yesterday sentenced an ethnic Albanian man to 15 years in prison over the 1998 killing of a woman he believed had “collaborated” with Serbs, a rights watchdog said. Idriz Gashi, 47, was found guilty of committing “war crimes against a civilian population” before the UN court in the western district of Pec, said the Humanitarian Law Center. According to the verdict, Gashi shot and killed the ethnic Albanian woman he accused of “complicity with the enemy Serbian forces” at a western KLA-controlled village in August 1998. (AFP)

One Swiss soldier was killed and five others injured in a road accident in Kosovo, the Swiss Defense Ministry said yesterday. The soldiers, who belong to a 215-strong Swiss peacekeeping contingent in the breakaway Serbian province, were traveling in an armored personnel carrier when the accident occurred yesterday, the ministry said. None of the survivors was seriously injured, and three have since been released from a German field hospital in Prizren, about 60 km (37 miles) southwest of Pristina, it said. (AP)

Turkey’s consumer confidence index rose 1.38 percent month-on-month in May to 94.96 points, the Turkish Statistics Institute said yesterday. The index was 93.66 points in April. The index charts spending patterns among consumers. (Reuters)