BELGRADE (AP) – Serbia’s state prosecutor yesterday requested a ban of two far-right groups that have recently attacked foreigners and threatened a gay parade in Belgrade. Spokesman Tomo Zoric said that the prosecutor’s office submitted a motion with Serbia’s Constitutional Court to formally ban the groups “Obraz,” or “Honor,” and “1389.” Both ultranationalist groups are staunchly anti-Western and pro-Russian. They are believed to be involved in the burning of the US Embassy in Belgrade in February last year during nationalist protests against the recognition of Kosovo by Western states. The groups have also disrupted several public gatherings by liberals, while their threats against a gay pride event in Belgrade forced the organizers to call off the march last Sunday. Zoric said groups have been promoting hostility against foreigners, non-Serbs, gays and other minority groups and as such should be banned.

ISTANBUL (AFP) – Prince Osman Ertugrul, the head of the Ottoman dynasty and the last pretender to the abolished imperial throne, has died at the age of 97 following a long illness, local officials said yesterday. Ertugrul was the most senior of the last descendants of Ottoman sultans who were chased out of Turkey in 1924, the year after the secular republic was declared on what was left of the once mighty empire. He would have been known as Ertugrul I or Osman V if he had ever ascended to the throne of the empire that ruled for more than 600 years. Born in 1912 in Istanbul, Ertugrul was the grandson of Sultan Abdulhamid II. He will be buried today in Istanbul, once the capital of the Ottoman Empire, in an Ottoman mausoleum where several sultans from the dynasty are buried, local officials said.

ANKARA (AFP) – The death toll from flash floods in Turkey’s northeastern region rose to five yesterday after rescuers recovered another body, the Anatolia news agency reported. The latest victim, a 54-year-old man, was found under the rubble of a three-story house in Kale village in the Black Sea province of Artvin that was razed to the ground in a landslide late Wednesday. On Thursday, rescuers recovered bodies of three other members of the same family from under the debris. The flooding also killed an 80-year-old woman in the nearby village of Demirciler.

Gunmen opened fire on a car belonging to the European Union mission near a flashpoint town in Kosovo, police said yesterday. No one was injured but the EULEX car was damaged in the attack late Thursday, police said in a statement. The car was escorting EU customs officers to the Kosovo-Serbia frontier when it was attacked on the outskirts of the city of Kosovska Mitrovica, ethnically divided between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, the statement said. (AFP)

Bosnia’s constitutional court yesterday annulled a new law imposing higher customs duties on nearly 1,000 items to protect local producers after the European Union said it violated free trade commitments. Hundreds of farmers voiced their disappointment outside the court building and said they planned to block Bosnia’s borders to stop imports in protest. “I’m very disappointed. It seems that someone wants to ruin agriculture in this country,” Mire Pejic, head of the farmers’ association, told AFP. The court said in a statement that its decision was in response to a request from the chairman of the upper house of parliament Ilija Filipovic, who argued the law breached the Central European Free Trade Association accord (CEFTA). (AFP)

Turkey’s state-run Anatolia news agency said yesterday that a deputy police chief and two other police officials had been arrested for alleged links to a drug baron. Emin Arslan and the other two officers were arrested yesterday and will be tried on drug charges. The three are the most senior police officials to be arrested on drug-related charges. Other news reports said Arslan and the two other senior officers – Murat Nemutlu and Mustafa Aral – were allegedly in contact with a drug baron who was detained following a raid on a narcotics lab last month. They are accused of aiding his drug-smuggling operations. (AP)