SOFIA (AP) - A Bulgarian climber, who was missing for four days on Mt Everest, has been found dead, an official said yesterday. According to Peter Atanasov, spokesman for a Bulgarian expedition, the body of Hristo Hristov, 26, was found yesterday about 8,680 meters (28,478 feet) up the mountain. Atanasov said that Hristov was descending Mount Everest after making it to the top of the world’s highest mountain. “He has died most probably of lack of oxygen and exhaustion on his way back,” the spokesman said.

BELGRADE (AP) - One of Serbia’s wealthiest businessman and a former close associate of slain Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic faces arrest for alleged financial wrongdoing, police said yesterday. In a statement faxed to The Associated Press, police said they issued an arrest warrant for Miodrag Kostic — Serbia’s biggest sugar producer and owner of several sugar factories — after he failed to show up for questioning in connection with the work of his MK Commerce company.

A mine exploded and killed two trainees at a de-mining class yesterday in northern Albania. “Two trainees were killed when the mine exploded during a lesson. They were cousins,” a police official said. “Six others are in serious condition,” he added. The accident occurred when instructors invited a group of 24 trainees to pass around and examine a typical mine they would find in areas along the border with ex-Yugoslavia. (Reuters)

Three Turkish policemen were wounded in a gun battle with members of the banned separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the village of Yuksekova, in eastern Turkey near the border with Iran, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. It quoted authorities as saying that police were hunting for the “terrorists” who attacked the police station in Yuksekova late Sunday. (AFP)

About 100 Albanian journalists blew whistles and shouted slogans in Tirana yesterday to protest an court decision to fine a newspaper publisher for slander for stories on what the paper described as corruption. A Tirana court last week convicted Nikolle Lesi, publisher of the independent newspaper Koha Jone, of slander against Prime Minister Fatos Nano. The court ordered Lesi to pay Nano and two of his aides 2 million leks ($19,600). The court convicted Lesi for stories that accused Nano of being corrupt when he awarded himself and two of his staff members financial rewards after the sale of a state-owned bank. (AP)

An earthquake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale jolted a border region between Croatia and Bosnia on Sunday, with only minor damage reported by authorities in Zagreb, the Croatian state seismological service said. (AFP)