1.   A car-smuggling operation resulted in a gun-battle between smugglers and border guards near the Hungarian-Yugoslav border, a border guards spokesman said Thursday.

2.   A border guard spokesman, Col. Mikhail Andreyev, said investigators have not ruled out a Chechen connection but were looking into other possibilities, including mafia involvement.

3.   Border guards confiscated the five fishing boats Wednesday from Dagestani fishermen suspected of poaching salmon in the Caspian Sea, an unidentified border guards spokesman told ITAR-Tass.

4.   Elsewhere in the country, fighters, airborne radar and refueling planes were scrambled, according to an air national guard spokesman at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida.

5.   Fifty five Kosovo Albanians were caught trying to illegally cross into Slovakia, where they need an entry visa, said Col. Attila Krisan, a border guards spokesman.

6.   Forty ethnic Albanians from embattled Kosovo were caught trying to illegally cross the Hungarian-Slovakian border Wednesday, a border guards spokesman said.

7.   Fourteen illegal immigrants from Turkey were found in a Ford Transit minivan in southeastern Hungary close to the Romanian border, a border guard spokesman said Tuesday.

8.   No Russian casualties were reported in the fighting, which broke out shortly after midnight, said Alexander Kondratyev, a border guards spokesman.

9.   The guards were doing chores and making repairs when they were attacked and forced into their cars at gunpoint, a border guards spokesman said.

10.   The guards then opened fire and forced the poachers to retreat, the report said, citing an unnamed border guard spokesman.