NICOSIA (Reuters) – A baby died and nine other newborns were seriously ill yesterday after a suspected outbreak of the rare legionnaires’ disease at a hospital in Cyprus, medics said. The newborn died yesterday and a second was in a critical condition while eight more were being treated for exposure to the same bacteria, doctors said. All 10 were born at the same private clinic in December and were less than two weeks’ old. “Initial tests suggest it is the Legionella bacteria,” said Health Minister Christos Patsalides. The private hospital has shut down its maternity ward.

BELGRADE (AFP) Serbian President Boris Tadic yesterday fired the country’s top military official who had publicly criticized the defense minister as being clueless. A presidency statement said Tadic had used his right under the constitution as commander of the armed forces to dismiss the chief of army general staff General Zdravko Ponos (photo). The decision followed a marathon meeting of the national security council in Belgrade on Monday devoted to the disagreements between Ponos and Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac over security and defence issues. Ponos, 46, will be replaced by his deputy, General Miloje Miletic, until a new chief of staff is appointed. The disagreement between Sutanovac and Ponos became public in a newspaper interview in which Ponos said reforms to the armed forces “had been stopped” and accused his minister, a civilian, of having “no concept” of defense issues.

MELBOURNE (AP) – A coroner in Australia has failed to find the cause of death of an Australian tourist whose body was found floating in the Adriatic Sea near the nightclub in Croatia where she was last seen in September. State coroner Jennifer Coate released an open finding yesterday in Melbourne, the hometown of 21-year-old Britt Lapthorne, whose remains were retrieved from the sea off the ancient tourist city of Dubrovnik on October 8. She was reported missing by her friends after failing to return to her hotel from a nightclub on September 17. A Croatian coroner was similarly inconclusive about Lapthorne’s cause of death.

Police in Croatia have arrested a 20-year-old man on suspicion of stealing no less than 30 humble Fiat Uno cars for joy rides in the past three months. The suspect, whose name was not disclosed, was nabbed in the Karlovac region, 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the capital Zagreb, appropriately at the wheel of a Uno, said police spokeswoman Aleksandra Ljuba. “Drivers of Fiat Unos can now put their hearts at ease,” she said. (AFP)

Kosovo’s police say two ethnic Albanian suspects have been arrested for stabbing a Serb man in the northern town of Mitrovica. Besim Hoti, a spokesman for the force, says Tuesday’s incident “has raised tensions” in the ethnically divided town. He says local Serbs have gathered in the northern part of town and that stones were hurled at Albanian houses in retaliation for the attack. The injured man has been hospitalized. (AP)

Serbia will apply for the European Union membership by mid-2009, even if its pre-accession pact with the bloc does not kick off, Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic said yesterday. His six-month-old Cabinet declared Serbia’s EU membership a top priority, but any progress hangs on the arrest of war crimes suspects. “We plan to submit the application for the European Union membership in the first half of 2009,” Cvetkovic said. Last April, Serbia signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU, the first step toward membership. But the Netherlands has blocked the implementation of the SAA or some trade benefits proposed by some EU member states, before Belgrade arrests and hands over former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. (Reuters)