BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union has agreed to grant Romania an extra 559.8 million euros in aid in 2007-2009 to strengthen its borders and prop up the national budget, an EU diplomat said yesterday. The assistance will come on top of 11 billion euros already promised from the bloc’s 2007-2009 budget for the Balkan country, which aims to join the EU in 2007. Today, Romania is expected to wrap up accession talks on environmental issues, moving closer to its goal of concluding all negotiations by the end of 2004 to sign the accession treaty next year along with neighboring Bulgaria.

SKOPJE (AP) - Two hand grenades exploded late on Wednesday just outside the home of the leader of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’s (FYROM) government but no one was injured, police said. The blasts occurred at the parking lot just outside the home of Radmila Secerinska, who became FYROM’s caretaker prime minister last week amid ethnic tensions and the resignation of former Prime Minister Hari Kostov. “Two hand grenades were thrown into the parking lot” outside the apartment building where Secerinska lives, police spokesman Goran Pavlovski told AP.

A shaft in a coal mine in western Turkey collapsed yesterday, killing one miner and injuring six others, the Anatolia news agency reported. The cause of the collapse was not clear, the agency said. The mine was located near the town of Kutahya, some 310 kilometers (190 miles) west of the capital Ankara. (AP)

Three people were killed, roads were blocked and hundreds of villages were isolated as heavy snowstorms hit Turkey for the second time this week, media reports said yesterday. A 60-year-old man in the province of Konya and another person in Palu, eastern Turkey, froze to death, the Anatolia news agency reported. A six-year-old boy in central Aksaray province was crushed to death when the roof of his home collapsed under the weight of the snow, the NTV news channel said, adding that a shepherd was reported missing in a mountain pasture in the northern province of Rize. (AFP)

A man caused an uproar at a police station in Kosovo when he walked in with a lost item to turn in: a hand grenade. The man brought the grenade to the police station in Kosovska Mitrovica, a town 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Pristina, on Wednesday after finding it in his apartment, police said in a statement yesterday. It was not clear how the grenade got in the man’s apartment in the first place. NATO-led peacekeepers destroyed the grenade later, Ponza said. Five years after the end of fighting in Kosovo, the UN-run province of 2 million is feared to be awash in illegal weapons and other ordinance. (AP)