SOFIA (AFP)– Sofia turned off its Christmas lights on Sunday in a show of solidarity for five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death in Libya along with a Palestinian doctor. Floodlights on the parliament and presidency buildings were cut for five minutes, plunging the Bulgarian capital’s landmarks into blackness, and Christmas lights were switched off in the city. The gesture initiated by Sofia’s Mayor Boiko Borissov was mirrored in several cities across the country.

ANKARA (AP) – Turkey’s parliament speaker yesterday called on a lawyer who has refused food for 265 days in protest at high-security prisons to immediately end his protest, promising a review of prison conditions in the new year. Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc met with family members of Behic Asci, who has been refusing solid foods but not liquids since April 5 to protest conditions in the maximum-security prisons where inmates are kept in one- or three-person cells. “Behic Asci must end this struggle which he calls a ‘death fast,’ that has been continuing for 265 days,” Arinc said. “We want this death fast to end so that he may regain his health... If this is done, I want to say that in the first week of January, a delegation will work on the issue.”

A former Croat soldier refused to enter a plea and two others pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges that they committed war crimes against Muslim civilians and prisoners during the country’s 1992-1995 conflict, a Bosnian court said. The war crimes chamber of the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina earlier this month charged the three former members of Bosnian-Croat militia with crimes against humanity committed in the southern town of Mostar in 1993 and 1994. Marko Radic, Dragan Sunjic and Damir Brekalo had “planned, ordered and instigated attacks” against Muslim civilians and were responsible for murders, rape and torture, a court statement said. As Radic refused to enter his plea, the court recorded a not guilty plea on his behalf. (AFP)

The chief editor of KAOS GL, Turkey’s only gay magazine, will go on trial tomorrow charged with publishing pornographic material, a gay rights group said yesterday. Umut Guner, 29, vice chairman of an advocacy group for homosexual rights that bears the same name as the magazine, will face up to three years in jail when he appears before an Ankara court, KAOS GL Secretary-General Ali Erol said. Guner was charged in connection with the magazine’s July 24 issue, confiscated for obscenity, which examined heterosexual and homosexual pornography and contained a drawing featuring nude figures. Erol said the case was an affront to freedom of expression. (AFP)