ISTANBUL (AFP) - One person died and at least five were wounded by an explosion yesterday at an Istanbul shopping center, four days after a deadly blast in an Internet cafe in the city, a television report said. NTV news gave no indication of the cause of the explosion, which took place in the Bahcelievler district in the European sector of the city. Several ambulances and fire engines sped to the scene, the Anatolia news agency reported.

ANKARA (AP) - A Turkish court yesterday charged two Islamic protesters who allegedly threw stones and shoes at a female journalist for not wearing an Islamic headscarf during a weekend demonstration against cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Aliye Cetinkaya, of the Sabah daily, was covering the demonstration from atop a media bus in the conservative central Anatolia city of Konya on Saturday. She was not injured.

Montenegro’s Parliament will sit at the end of the month in a bid to determine the conditions for a referendum that could end the tiny Balkan state’s uneasy union with Serbia. The session was postponed from last week at the request of EU envoy Miroslav Lajcak due to a tense standoff between Montenegro’s pro-independence government and pro-union opposition over the vote’s timing and wording. The parliamentary debate will now be convened on February 28. (AFP)

A Turkish Airlines flight skidded off a runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on Sunday, but none of the 197 passengers was injured. Turkish Airlines Flight 1 skidded off the runway at 9.20 p.m. Sunday as it was landing, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The flight was arriving from someplace in Turkey, he said. (AP)

The UN mission in Kosovo said it would sign an agreement with Sweden yesterday regarding the return of asylum seekers to this disputed province, a statement said. Swedish Migration Minister Barbro Holmberg and the UN mission’s deputy chief Larry Rossin were to sign the agreement regulating the return from Sweden of those who failed to gain asylum, a UN statement said. (AP)

An Orthodox priest is accused of urging members of his congregation in southeast Romania to take out loans worth 200,000 euros ($240,000) for church renovations and then disappearing with the money, police said yesterday. An arrest warrant was issued for Valentin Petrea, 24, on charges of fraud and making false statements, said Valentin Mustatea, a police official in the Black Sea city of Mangalia. (AP)