Four Bulgarian nationals were killed and 26 people were injured in a bus crash in Turkey close to the Bulgarian border, the foreign ministry in Sofia said Sunday.

The crash occurred Saturday evening as the bus, which belonged to a Turkish company registered in Bulgaria, was travelling from Istanbul to Silistra in northeastern Bulgaria, the ministry said in a statement.

Israel is concerned Hizbullah will try to attack Israelis overseas in the coming weeks and ahead of the fourth anniversary of the assassination of the party’s military commander Imad Mughniyeh, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Mughniyeh was killed in a car bombing in Syria on Feb. 12, 2008. Hizbullah has accused Israel's intelligence service Mossad of assassinating him.

Bulgaria's prime minister may occasionally take to the field for a third-division side Vitosha Bistritsa, but even he admitted Monday being nominated the country's best footballer might be a step too far.

Boiko Borisov, 52, is on track to be crowned best player in a poll of supporters with 44 percent of the vote, well ahead of Manchester United striker Dimitar Berbatov on 24 percent, according to preliminary figures.

A stuntman has died and another was injured on a film shoot for star-studded Hollywood action sequel "The Expendables 2" in Bulgaria, the production company said.

The incident occurred while the two men were shooting a scene involving an explosion in a rubber boat near a dam on Lake Ognyanovo in southwestern Bulgaria last Thursday, media reports said.

Polling stations in Bulgaria opened at 6:00 am (0300 GMT) Sunday for the first round of presidential and local elections, with eve-of-ballot polls predicting a win for the ruling right-wing GERB party of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

Some 6.9 million Bulgarians in the country and abroad are eligible to elect in a direct majority vote a successor to incumbent Socialist President Georgy Parvanov, stepping down after two five-year terms in office.

A jobless Bulgarian man scraping a living by hunting for scrap metal has uncovered a haul of Bronze Age treasure worth 1.5 million euros ($2 million).

The 42-year-old discovered the trove of jewelry, coins and tools potentially dating back 4,000 years among the roots of a tree in the northern town of Svichtov.

Twenty-two years after the fall of its communist regime, Bulgaria opened on Monday its first-ever museum of the state-sponsored, propaganda art characteristic of that era.

The Museum of Socialist Art in Sofia exhibits some 77 sculptures, 60 paintings and 25 smaller plastic art works created between 1945 and 1989 by the most renowned sculptors and painters of the time.

Religious-linked violence and abuse rose around the world between 2006 and 2009, with Christians and Muslims the most common targets, according to a private U.S. study released Tuesday.

"Over the three-year period studied, incidents of either government or social harassment were reported against Christians in 130 countries (66 percent) and against Muslims in 117 countries (59 percent)," said the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life study.

A Libyan diplomat in Bulgaria has been declared "persona non grata" and will have to leave the country within 24 hours, the foreign ministry announced Monday.

It did not say however why the consular adviser, Ibrahim al-Furis, was being asked to leave.

On a Saturday in July, some 20 men and women stood behind pots and jars of homemade yoghurt at Tran's pensioners' club, feverishly awaiting the jury's pronouncement on their concoctions.

Every year in mid-July, the small town of Tran, huddled at the foot of the Balkan mountains near Bulgaria's border with Serbia, celebrates the art of making yoghurt and commemorates the local scientist who discovered the bacteria that turns milk into its thickened sour form -- a food seen as the pearl of Bulgarian gastronomic heritage.