ANKARA (Reuters) – The powerful chairman of Turkey’s secular higher education board (YOK) escaped a suspected assassination attempt yesterday, an official said. An unnamed man tried to forcibly enter the YOK office in Ankara to see Erdogan Tezic, a well-known secularist. When he was prevented from entering, the gunman fired three shots at security officials, a YOK official told Reuters. “The attacker directed a gun at security officials and told them he wanted to speak to Tezic and escaped when the security officials tried to stop him,” the official, who declined to be named, said. No one was hurt in the attack.

SARAJEVO (AP) – Hundreds gathered at a Sarajevo cemetery yesterday to bury five babies who died in a fire at an orphanage. An early morning fire tore through the orphanage on Sunday, killing the babies and injuring 17 others and a nurse who tried to save them. The orphanage’s director and resident children stood around the five small coffins lined up at the Vlakovo cemetery as the Muslim imam said prayers.

Six candidates in Bulgaria’s European Parliament elections were former agents of the communist secret services, a commission announced yesterday. Of the 218 candidates running in the May 20 vote, the commission revealed that three were former foreign intelligence spies, one was a military intelligence agent and two others were registered as informers at the notorious communist-era “Darzhavna Sigurnost.” Two of the candidates listed by the commission come from the ruling ex-communist Bulgarian Socialist Party, one of the listed candidates is a deputy chairman of the Turkish minority Movement for Rights and Freedoms party and the other three come from small right-wing parties. (AFP)

Serb media responded yesterday with a sense of pride and patriotism that a new mineral had been found in Serbia closely resembling the makeup of the fictional “kryptonite,” which rendered Superman helpless. Reacting to the discovery of the real new mineral in western Serbia, they pointed out that “kryptonite” was created from the remains of Superman’s home planet Krypton, destroyed in a fireball. “Superman is a Serb!” was the conclusion drawn in headlines favored by several newspapers. The daily Kurir said: “Finally we have scientific proof that we are God’s own people!” Even the staid pro-government daily Politika joined in the fun, speculating that the “S” on the Man of Steel’s blue costume really stood for “Serbia.” (Reuters)