ISTANBUL (AP) - A bomb hidden in a garbage can exploded near a bus stop in Istanbul yesterday, killing one person and injuring 13 others, police said. The blast occurred in the Kocamustafapasa district of Istanbul. A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bomb was believed to have contained plastic explosives and authorities suspect that autonomy seeking Kurdish rebels may have been behind the blast. Turkish rules bar civil servants from speaking to journalists on the record without prior authorization. Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said the man killed in the blast was a street vendor who sold sesame-coated pretzels. A child was among the injured, CNN-Turk television reported. Video footage broadcast on CNN-Turk showed debris scattered across a residential street in Istanbul, covering the sidewalk and parked cars.

SOFIA (AP) - The EU’s budget commissioner urged Bulgaria yesterday to improve its spending mechanisms for absorbing European funds before its planned entry into the bloc next year. Bulgaria lacks enough skilled financial experts able to prepare financial projects according to EU requirements, said EU Budget Commissioner Dalia Grybauskaite, who arrived on a two-day visit to the Balkan country. “Human capacity, structures and qualification are the main challenges facing Bulgaria,” Grybauskaite told reporters after meeting with Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev. There are no major problems in the financial sector that could be an obstacle to Bulgaria’s accession to the EU in 2007, she said.

Serbian authorities yesterday returned the remains of 49 ethnic Albanian war victims found in a mass grave at a police training center, an official said. The victims are believed to be ethnic Albanian civilians killed by Serb forces during the 1998-1999 war whose bodies were removed from Kosovo in an apparent cover-up attempt by then-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. The remains were exhumed from a mass grave on the grounds of a police training center in Batajnica, just outside of Belgrade, and were delivered to UN authorities in the border area of Merdare, said Valerie Brasey, from the UN-run office for missing persons and forensics. (AP)