ZAGREB (AFP) - Croatian authorities yesterday started to kill thousands of domestic birds in a rural eastern area where a second case of the bird flu virus in the country has been confirmed. “The operation is conducted in a 3-kilometer (2-mile) area around (the village of) Nasice,” where dead swans infected with the H5 strain of virus had been found dead over the weekend, Agriculture Minister Petar Cobankovic told journalists. Results are not yet in from tests to determine whether the cases found to date in Croatia are of the virulent H5N1 strain of influenza.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission warned Bulgaria and Romania yesterday that their EU entry could be put off a year until 2008 unless they step up the fight against corruption and speed up reforms. In an annual progress report, the EU executive said the two Balkan states must act urgently to eliminate high-level graft, beef up controls of their porous borders, improve food hygiene standards and strengthen their administrations and courts. “Bulgaria and Romania have achieved significant progress so far in the preparations for accession. But the jury is still out,” said Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn.

A new mass grave believed to contain the bodies of dozens of Srebrenica massacre victims has been found in northeastern Bosnia, an official said yesterday. The head of the forensic team, Murat Hurtic, said one of the 1995 massacre’s survivors helped find the grave said to contain “dozens of Srebrenica victims,” in Snagovo, 50km north of Srebrenica. (AP)

Turkish police have displayed scores of unidentified bodies on their website in the hope that someone will be able to identify them. The police website has pictures of some of the 555 unidentified bodies found throughout the country in the last five years. More than half were found in Turkey’s biggest city Istanbul. Of the bodies, 458 were men and 97 women. (Reuters)

A Turkish Airlines plane continued on to Istanbul from Zurich after a bomb threat forced it down in Budapest, an airport spokeswoman there said yesterday. “The plane was checked and no bomb was found,” the official said. (Reuters)