■SERBIA
Bob Marley statue dedicated
A village, Banatski Sokolac, unveiled what it said was Europe’s first statue to the late Jamaican reggae star Bob Marley on Saturday, to promote tolerance in a region still recovering from war. Two Balkan musicians, one from Croatia and one from Serbia, unveiled the monument in the village of Banatski Sokolac at midnight during a gathering of rock bands from the Balkans. “Bob Marley promoted peace and tolerance in his music,” Mirko Miljus, an organizer, said. The event continued a trend of raising monuments to popular Western icons instead of local historical figures. Bosnians have erected a monument to Bruce Lee in the town of Mostar and Serbs have put up a statue to Rocky Balboa in northern Serbia.
■ITALY
Nun pageant to be held
A priest and theologian said on Sunday he is organizing an online beauty pageant for nuns to give them more visibility within the Catholic Church and to fight the stereotype that they are all old and dour. The “Miss Sister 2008” contest will start next month on a blog run by the Reverend Antonio Rungi and will give nuns from around the world a chance to showcase their work and their image. “Nuns are a bit excluded, they are a bit marginalized in ecclesiastical life,” Rungi said after local media carried reports of the idea.
■UGANDA
Rebels accuse south Sudan
A spokesman for the country’s fugitive northern rebels accused south Sudanese troops of attacking guerrilla positions on Sunday on the Congo border, preventing a peace meeting. Officials from the South Sudanese Liberation Army (SPLA) could not immediately be reached for comment, and there was no independent confirmation of the clash. “Sometime last week there was a skirmish after SPLA attacked our positions,” David Nyekorach-Matsanga, a spokesman for Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, said by telephone from the south Sudanese capital Juba.
■BURUNDI
Grenade attack kills 19
A man killed 19 people in Bujumbura when he hurled a grenade into his brother’s wedding party in what police said on Sunday was a land dispute. One person was arrested after the incident on Saturday night in the central Gitega Province. “The grenade was launched into a crowd of people at the wedding ceremony,” police spokesman Pierre Ntarabaganyi said. He said the suspect was a brother of the groom, but that the groom and his wife survived the attack. Dozens of guests were hurt.
■GERMANY
Son wants father ‘dead’
A son of notorious Nazi doctor Aribert Heim was quoted as saying on Sunday that he wants his father declared legally dead so he can take control of his money and donate some of it to help document the suffering that occurred at a former concentration camp. Ruediger Heim told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that his father — dubbed “Dr. Death” and atop the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most-wanted suspected Nazi war criminals — should officially be declared missing and then dead. He reiterated he has not had any contact with his father since the doctor fled Germany in 1962, save two short notes in his family’s mailbox. “Between 1962 and 1967, two notes appeared in our mailbox. There was a single sentence written on them, ‘I am doing fine.’ But if those letters were really from my father, I do not know,” the paper quoted him as saying. Heim also said that he has no idea if his father, who would be 94, is alive or dead.
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