LONDON (Reuters) - A British man has been killed and nine other passengers injured, one critically, after a hot-air balloon crashed during an adventure holiday in central Turkey, the firm that organized the trip said yesterday. Explore Worldwide said eight of the passengers injured in the incident early yesterday in the Cappadocia region of central Turkey were British nationals and the ninth French. No details of the dead man were immediately available. The company said it was still investigating the accident but believed two balloons collided shortly after takeoff. A spokesman for the firm said there were reports the balloon plunged up to 200 meters.

BELGRADE (AP) - Police filed torture charges yesterday against a Serbian Orthodox priest who allegedly beat a drug rehab patient with a shovel. The former head of the church-backed Crna Reka rehabilitation center in southern Serbia, Branislav Peranovic, has been removed from his position by a local bishop after a video broadcast on national television allegedly showed him swinging a shovel at an unnamed patient's lower back. An employee of the center, shown in another video punching a patient with brass knuckles and kicking him until he nearly was knocked unconscious, was also charged by police for «harassment and torture.» They could face up to five years in prison if convicted. Crna Reka priests have said the beatings were a necessary part of the therapy and were carried out with the consent of the patients and their parents.

Peace talks on ethnically divided Cyprus could produce a deal by early next year, Turkish-Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat said yesterday. «If we miss this opportunity, we may not find one again,» Talat told Reuters in an interview. Talat represents the Turkish-Cypriot community in reunification talks with Cyprus President Dimitris Christofias, a Greek Cypriot. «My target is for a solution by the end of the year, and a referendum at the beginning of 2010,» said Talat. «The chance [of a solution by then] is quite high.» (Reuters)

Croatia believes it has fulfilled its United Nations war crimes obligations as part of its bid to become the next country to join the European Union, a minister said yesterday. Last month Croatia sent the UN war crimes tribunal a report about files missing for the trial of former Croatian General Ante Gotovina, Justice Minister Ivan Simonovic told journalists. «Croatia estimates that by [submitting] this report, it has fulfilled its obligations» toward the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), he stressed. (AFP)

Unknown gunmen have abducted a Turkish engineer in eastern Afghanistan, police said yesterday. The unidentified man was captured Thursday as he was returning to his guesthouse in the eastern town of Khost, provincial Police Chief Abdul Qayoum Baqizoi told AFP. It was not known who had captured him or why, the official said. The engineer had been working on building a hospital in the area. (AFP)

Forensic experts completed the exhumation yesterday of a Bosnian mass grave thought to contain the remains of 16 Srebrenica massacre victims, officials said. «Sixteen complete bodies that we believe are of Muslim civilians killed in July 1995 [in Srebrenica] were exhumed» from the grave in the village of Mrsici, Bosnia's Missing Persons Institute said in a statement. «The bodies had their hands tied behind their backs with wire, while many bullet casings were found in the grave,» it said. The grave was discovered this week in Mrsici, near the town of Vlasenica. (AFP)