SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria will withdraw its troops from Iraq by the end of the year but remains a staunch supporter of US-led operations there, Sergei Stanishev, the new prime minister, said yesterday. The Socialist-led government has decided to stick to a previous plan for the end-of-the-year pullout of its 370 troops from Iraq, stepping back from a Socialist Party (BSP) pre-election pledge to withdraw the soldiers sooner. “Bulgaria... will look for other forms of supporting Iraqi stability. That might include training of Iraqi police, participation in NATO training missions of Iraqi army and security forces and others,” Stanishev said.

ZAGREB (AFP) - Croatian children will find it more difficult to mess up in school and keep it secret this year as information about their performance will be available to parents at the touch of a mobile phone button, an official said yesterday. Thanks to a program financed by the Education Ministry, parents can opt to receive reports about their children’s school achievements and attendance via SMS text messages, Drazen Vikic Topic of the Education Ministry said. “Parents will receive general information on school events and activities as well as on children’s behavior and marks,” he said.

Three UN police officers arrested in Kosovo for alleged people-smuggling were ordered released by a pretrial judge, the UN mission said yesterday. The judge rejected the prosecutor’s request for the detention of the three, citing lack of evidence, said Neeraj Singh, the UN spokesman in Kosovo. The prosecutor was appealing the decision. (AP)

Three Bulgarians have been arrested in northeastern Italy for credit and debit card fraud across the European Union, a Bulgarian police official said yesterday. The three were caught red-handed while installing a device on a bank cash machine to scan confidential credit card data in the northeastern Italian resort of Riva del Garda, the Interior Ministry’s chief secretary Boiko Borissov said. He said the Italian police carried out the arrests after a four-month joint operation by the Bulgarian services and the EU police agency Europol. (Reuters)

Three Serbian citizens were killed and three injured early yesterday when their minibus crashed into a truck on a Bulgarian highway, police said. The Serbian minibus traveling through Bulgaria from Istanbul, Turkey, smashed into the back of a heavy truck, which was moving in the same direction, according to a police statement. (AP)