Eastern Europe has been hit by a near-record heatwave which has seen wildfires raging and people fainting in the streets.

REGARDING your report headlined ‘Pope orders disciplinary measures on priest over sex scandal’ (September 9), I would like to make a number of points.

I READ with bemusement Pat Corkery’s attack on Cork Socialist Party councillor Mick Barry (Letters, August 21) and with much greater alarm the letter by Desmond FitzGerald from Canary Wharf in London, no less.

HUNTING clubs in the Medjugorje area of Bosnia-Herzegovina have been asked to assist in the search for missing Irish woman Winnie Brady.

AN official from the Irish Embassy in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has been appointed to co-ordinate efforts to find an Irish woman who disappeared more than a week ago while on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje.

Opera supremo Luciano Pavarotti hopes to wow fans in Sarajevo, Bosnia, if plans to extend his farewell tour to include the former war zone materialise.

A former Bosnian Muslim army commander was acquitted of war crimes charges today relating to the massacres of Croat civilians during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

The VHI has said it has made contact with the Bosnian hospital criticised over its treatment of a Co Westmeath girl suffering from suspected meningitis.

Four students from the Pontifical Irish College in Rome are to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood this year, it was confirmed today.

FOR centuries, Mostar’s stone bridge was an icon of ethnic diversity. Then, when shelling destroyed it in 1993, the ancient span came to symbolize the senseless brutality of Bosnia’s war.

An historic bridge reduced to rubble during the Bosnian war was being reopened today, nearly 11 years after it was destroyed by Croat forces.

Errors by the flight crew caused the crash that killed Macedonia’s president Boris Trajkovski and eight of his associates two months ago, officials announced today.

MACEDONIANS voted yesterday for a successor to president Boris Trajkovski, killed in a plane crash in February, with the incumbent prime minister tipped to win despite his poor economic record.

A YOUNG Bosnian woman who was almost completely blind is having her sight restored by Irish doctors.

Search parties today found the wreckage of the plane which crashed in Bosnia yesterday killing the Macedonian president and eight others, authorities said.

MACEDONIA'S president, a moderate credited with helping to unite his ethnically-divided country, was killed yesterday when his plane crashed in bad weather in mountainous southern Bosnia.

Macedonia’s president Boris Trajkovski was killed today when his plane crashed in a mountainous part of southern Bosnia en route to an international investment conference.

A plane carrying Macedonia’s president to an international investment conference in Bosnia crashed in a mountainous area today.

A plane carrying Macedonia’s president Boris Trajkovski to an international investment conference in Bosnia disappeared from radar, US officials said.

Hardened activists, families and people making their first gestures of public protest joined in global demonstrations against war in Iraq.

IN the coming weeks this column will feature "Good Buy" holidays for 2003, dealing with the traditionally popular sun holiday destinations, both far afield and closer to home.

The Minister for Defence, Michael Smith is to visit Mostar, one of the cities made famous for the violence and bloodshed during the Bolkan conflict later today.

A man has been accused of plotting to assassinate the commander of the Nato-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia.

The US and Britain have closed their embassies in Bosnia after receiving a “credible security threat”.

The UN war crimes court has heard how a Bosnian Serb waiter locked 65 women, children, babies and old men in a house before setting it alight.

Hundreds of Serbs have blocked a ground-breaking ceremony for the reconstruction of a mosque in the Bosnian Serb town of Trebinje.

Hardline Croatian nationalist attacked NATO peacekeepers in the city of Mostar yesterday after they mounted a crackdown on organisations bent on breaking up the country's Muslim-Croat Federation.

An Irish soldier and garda on peacekeeping duties in Bosnia have been injured in an outbreak of violence.