SOFIA (AFP) – Bulgaria has asked the European Commission to double compensation funds for its closure of four reactors at the Kozloduy nuclear power plant, Energy Minister Petar Dimitrov said yesterday. “Bulgaria is negotiating to double the compensation it receives from the EU for Kozloduy,” Dimitrov was quoted as saying by national radio. Brussels asked Sofia to close down four reactors at the plant, before Bulgaria began talks to join the EU, after its experts concluded the Soviet-built reactors could not be modernized at a reasonable price.

SOFIA (AFP) – Seven people were killed in a car accident yesterday, near Plovdiv in southern Bulgaria, after a makeshift fuel tank on one of the vehicles exploded, highway police said. The accident occurred when a car carrying five people swerved into the oncoming lane and crashed into another car. Witnesses said some of the passengers from the first vehicle were calling for help when the fuel tank on their car exploded. The driver and passenger of the other car were also killed in the accident.

Three men posing as policemen were shot – one fatally – when they tried to rob two men who turned out to be real officers, Austrian police said Saturday. The men, Romanians in their 20s, stopped the policemen’s car along the S1 highway east of Vienna in the early hours of Saturday, police said. When the occupants of the car identified themselves as plainclothes officers, one of the robbers allegedly fired a gun. No one was injured. One officer shot back, injuring all three men. The robbers fled for a short distance in their car before surrendering, police said. One of the men died before a medic arrived; the others were hospitalized. (AFP)

Ankara denounced Saturday the shooting of a Turkish fisherman by Bulgarian security forces in the Black Sea and urged a swift investigation into the incident. “Such action against fishermen on the grounds that they are fishing illegally is unacceptable,” a Foreign Ministry statement said, adding that Ankara “reserves its legal rights” over Thursday’s incident. “We expect the Bulgarian authorities to complete as soon as possible the required investigation and inform our country about the outcome,” it said. The Bulgarian police said the man was shot accidentally as security forces tried to arrest him for fishing illegally for turbot in the Bulgarian waters of the Black Sea. (AFP)