ANKARA (AP) – Turkish health authorities yesterday warned people to keep out of the sun and some local governments said civil servants with health problems could stay home after meteorologists predicted that temperatures would soar several degrees above seasonal averages this week. Southern and Aegean Turkey is already sizzling under a heat wave and meteorologists predicted that temperatures would reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and beyond in other parts of the country today and tomorrow as well. Health ministry official Turan Buzgan asked people to “avoid going outdoors between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. unless necessary.”

ANKARA (AP) – Human rights group Amnesty International said yesterday that Turkish authorities had frozen the bank accounts of its branch in the country in a move it said amounts to a violation of rights to free expression and association. The group’s accounts have been frozen since January for alleged illegal fundraising stemming from the fact that Amnesty advertises bank accounts on its website and the way activists register new members through face-to-face meetings in the streets, said Levent Korkut, who heads the groups’ operations in Turkey. Amnesty said it fears the move may be a tactic to “harass” the group and impede its fundraising activities and called for an immediate end to the legal proceedings.

Two former Bosnian-Serb soldiers have been indicted for crimes against humanity committed against Muslim civilians at the beginning of the country’s 1992-1995 war, a court said yesterday. Mirko Todorovic, 53, and Milos Radic, 48, are accused of taking part in the execution of seven Muslims at Borkovac village near the eastern town of Bratunac in May 1992, the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina said in a statement. At the time, both were members of the then army of Republika Srpska. (AFP)

A court in Diyarbakir, southeast Turkey, yesterday sentenced 10 Islamist militants to life in prison for a wave of deadly attacks that killed at least 24 people in the early 1990s. The accused were found guilty of having carried out the attacks with the aim of overthrowing the government. An 11th defendant was acquitted. The attacks were carried out in the city between 1992 and 1994 by the Turkish group Hezbollah. The authorities accuse the group of seeking to overthrow this Muslim majority country’s secular system. (AFP)