NICOSIA (AFP) - A military court in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus yesterday fined two Israeli tourists for entering the abandoned coastal town of Varosha, which is a sealed-off military zone. Nir Baruch, 21, and Omer Ginizburgh, 22, were arrested Tuesday on charges of entering a military zone without permission, a day after they crossed into the breakaway Turkish-Cypriot state from the internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south of the divided island.

DIYARBAKIR (Reuters) - Turkish security forces have killed seven Kurdish guerrillas in the country's troubled southeast, security sources said yesterday. They said the rebels, members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), were killed during a gun battle in the province of Mardin near the Syrian border on Thursday night.

Turkey's Parliament approved a law late on Thursday allowing former prime minister Necmettin Erbakan to serve a suspended 11-month jail sentence at home because of his advanced age. Erbakan, who is 80 this year, was among scores of Islamists charged with misappropriating 11 million lira ($8.16 million) of funds from their now-defunct Welfare Party. His jail sentence had been postponed several times due to ill health. (Reuters)

Albanian police said yesterday they have arrested a man who was convicted in absentia of running one of the failed pyramid investment schemes that sparked widespread rioting nine years ago. Ferdinand Kamberi, 42, was arrested Thursday evening in the city of Durres, 33 kilometers (20 miles) west of the capital, Tirana, police said. Kamberi was convicted in absentia of running one of 24 pyramid schemes that collapsed in 1997. Many Albanians lost their life savings and the impoverished Balkan country was plunged into chaos. (AP)

Authorities evacuated dozens of people and shut down a power plant after a swollen river in the province burst its banks flooding the area, officials said yesterday. About 100 people were removed from their stranded homes in the northern town of Kosovska Mitrovica and the nearby Vucitrn, after the River Sitnica flooded several villages and neighborhoods in that area, said UN police spokesman Larry Miller. (AP)

The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has rejected a request by Slobodan Milosevic to travel to Russia for specialist medical treatment, the court said yesterday. «The request is denied,» the court said in a written decision, noting that the former Yugoslavia president was in the final stages of a trial that has already lasted four years. (Reuters)