SOFIA (AP) - European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso yesterday urged Bulgaria to «show concrete results» in the fight against high-level corruption and organized crime to save its chances to join the bloc in January as scheduled. «We want Bulgaria in the EU on January 1, 2007, this is our common goal, but it is the Commission's duty to make sure that Bulgaria is ready for membership,» Barroso told reporters during a brief visit to Sofia. Barroso said the EU would decide in October whether it could allow Bulgaria in on January 1, or postpone its entry by a year.

SOFIA (Reuters) - Turkey must immediately step up reform efforts to avoid a confrontation with the EU when accession talks resume later this year, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said yesterday. «It is necessary that the Turkish government takes immediate action to restart the momentum of the country's reforms,» Rehn told journalists on a visit to Sofia.

Police said yesterday they had arrested a British man working with a children's foundation in Albania for alleged pedophilia. Johan Douglas Branon, 55, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with engaging in sexual acts with children who were being assisted by the My Children foundation, where he worked as administrator, a police statement said. Two other British men who once worked for the same organization were wanted on the same charges, but were still at large, police said. (AP)

A Bulgarian engineer arrested in Libya in 1999 with five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, now on retrial for «knowingly» injecting Libyan children with HIV-contaminated blood, said yesterday he saw the six tortured in detention. «The nurses were beaten with many stranded wire, for a long time and painfully. When they collapsed totally, they were dragged somewhere and brought back in a helpless state,» Smilian Tachev told the Trud daily. (AFP)

Finnish Premier Matti Vanhanen discussed Turkey's EU negotiations with his Turkish counterpart yesterday. Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Finland - which assumes the rotating EU presidency in July - had been a supporter of opening official negotiations with Turkey to join the EU. (AP)