SOFIA (AP) - Authorities in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, were seeking help from the government yesterday to prevent a possible epidemic due to tons of uncollected garbage on its streets. Sofia’s governor, Rosen Vladimirov, declared the city “in crisis,” a step lower than an emergency but which still requires government institutions to intervene. Residents of Suhodol, western Sofia, have blocked roads to the capital’s only landfill for a fifth day, demanding the dump’s closure because of the risk of infection.

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania is making all efforts to join the EU on time in 2007 but it would not be a tragedy if its entry is delayed by a year, Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu said in a radio interview yesterday. “I don’t think it would be the biggest tragedy if Romania’s accession was delayed by a year,” Tariceanu told the state radio. A recent nationwide opinion poll showed that around 35 percent of Romanians thought a delay in Romania’s EU accession was “probable” and 18 percent thought it “very probable.”

A UN tribunal yesterday set January 2007 for the beginning of former Kosovo premier Ramush Haradinaj’s war crimes trial. At a procedural hearing, Judge Hans Henrik Brydensholt said the trial was likely to last 18 months, and certainly no less than one year. (AP)

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan left yesterday for a working but non-official visit to the US seeking to drum up investment in Turkey, government officials said. Erdogan, accompanied by Economy Minister Ali Babacan and Finance Minister Kemal Unakitan, was scheduled to deliver the inuagural address at the annual Sun Valley business conference in Idaho. (AFP)

A homeless man set himself on fire yesterday in front of a media center in Bucharest, the Romanian capital. The man climbed into a tree and sprayed paint thinner on his clothes. He then set himself on fire and fell from the tree. A fire department crew put out the fire and the man was rushed to a Bucharest hospital, where he had surgery for severe burns. (AP)