Eurasia

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia and its ally Russia are consulting on joint steps to stop “all forms of violence against Kosovo Serbs”, Serbia’s caretaker prime minister Vojislav Kostunica said in a statement on Monday.

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (Reuters) – Members of a pro-Kremlin youth group demonstrated outside a U.S. consulate in Russia’s far east on Monday to support Alexander Kashin, a local man paralyzed in an accident involving a U.S. diplomat’s car.

PRISTINA (Reuters) – NATO troops came under automatic weapons fire during Serb riots in the northern Kosovo flashpoint town of Mitrovica on Monday, a French NATO spokesman told Reuters.

MITROVICA, Kosovo (Reuters) – An explosion in the Kosovo town of Mitrovica wounded three U.N. police officers and two NATO soldiers during heavy clashes on Monday with Serb protesters, Kosovo police said. A police statement said the wounded personnel were being evacuated.

MITROVICA, Kosovo (Reuters) – Serbs attacked a U.N. convoy carrying Serb detainees from a raid in Kosovo on Monday, enabling several detainees to escape, a Reuters witness said.

GERDEC, Albania (Reuters) – Albanian troops searched through rubble on Sunday for survivors of a huge munitions blast that razed an army base near the capital Tirana and killed at least nine people.

BELGRADE/PRISTINA (Reuters) – The red box of the buttery ‘Plazma’ cookie, one of ex-Yugoslavia’s best-loved snacks, offers a quick introduction to the dilemma of businesses trapped in the political tussle between Serbia and Kosovo.

TIRANA (Reuters) – About 160 people, including several Americans, were killed or injured on Saturday by a series of large explosions at an Albanian army base on the outskirts of the capital Tirana, government officials said.

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday condemned a bid by state prosecutors to shut down his ruling AK Party as an attack on democracy and political stability and vowed to resist it.

The arrests came after police raids in several districts of Istanbul and the seizure of bomb-making equipment and documents, the agency said.