LUXEMBOURG (AFP) – European foreign ministers yesterday approved measures to ease trade across Cyprus, allowing more goods to cross the “green line” from the Turkish-occupied statelet in the north of the island. The ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, agreed a raft of measures to boost trade and economic integration which the European Commission had proposed in April. The new measures lift duties on agricultural products “thus avoiding cumbersome procedures” the ministers said in a joint text. Other moves will encourage the provision of services by companies in the Greek-Cypriot south and facilitate participation in trade fairs.

Albanian President Bamir Topi yesterday sacked the army’s chief of staff in the wake of devastating blasts at an ordnance factory in March that killed 26 people, his office said. A source from the president’s cabinet told AFP that General Luan Hoxha, 48, had been removed at the request of Prime Minister Sali Berisha, but refused to elaborate on the reason for the move. Hoxha lost his post after former Defense Minister Fatmir Mediu accused the military of sole responsibility for the explosions at a communist-era ordnance factory that killed 26 people and wounded 302 near Tirana on March 15. (AFP)

An explosion whose cause is still unknown, but which one witness attributed to a bomb, injured eight people Sunday in a cafe in the Turkish city of Istanbul, the Anatolia news agency reported. The blast blew out windows and destroyed one car parked near the cafe in the outlying Buyukcekmece quarter on the European side of the Bosporus, it said. Two people were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, while six others sustained only slight injuries, hospital sources told the news agency. Police at the scene were not immediately able to determine the cause of the blast, but one of those injured told Anatolia he believed it to have been caused by a bomb. (AFP)