ANKARA (Reuters) - The death toll from the collapse of a 10-story apartment building in central Turkey rose to 43 yesterday, Turkish television reported. Officials say faulty construction caused the 36-apartment building to buckle on Monday in an affluent district of Konya, south of Ankara. NTV quoted rescue workers as saying hopes were dwindling of finding any more survivors amid the rubble. “Time is running short... There remains very little hope of finding anybody else alive,” rescue worker Zekai Turan told NTV. A 5-meter-high (16-foot) pile of debris is all that remains of the modern apartment block. Police detained two contractors on Wednesday in connection with the building’s collapse.

BUCHAREST (AP) - Romania’s prime minister has promised to ban all international adoptions after the EU threatened to cut off this Balkan country’s chances of joining the organization without the crucial reform. Prime Minister Adrian Nastase’s remarks late Wednesday came amid revelations that 105 children were set to be adopted in Italy despite an interim ban on international adoptions which began in 2001. Nastase said there would no longer be exceptions to the moratorium “no matter who wants an exception.”

The wife of Bosnia’s most wanted war-crimes fugitive, Radovan Karadzic, filed charges against NATO troops in Bosnia for damaging her house while searching for her husband, Bosnian-Serb police said yesterday. The charges claim the troops caused damage worth 30,000 convertible marks ($19,000) to her house during the raid. NATO troops in early January searched the Karadzic home in Pale, near Sarajevo. (AP)

A 37-year-old German tourist has been found dead in the southern Turkish resort of Alanya six months after he went missing, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. York Liedke’s body was found by a fisherman on rocky cliffs lying at the bottom of the castle in Alanya. Police established that the man, who had several fractures to his body, died after falling, the agency said. (AFP)

A local farmer uncovered a stash of ammunition and grenades near a river in a small southern Albanian village, police said yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of bullets and 25 hand grenades were hidden in the village of Vanister, 225 kilometers (135 miles) south of the capital, Tirana. Though the government has made fighting terrorism and organized crime a top priority in hopes of eventually joining the European Union and NATO, illegally held arms are still a major problem. (AP)

European soccer’s governing body yesterday picked Turkey to host the final of the Champions League in 2005. UEFA said the high-profile match would take place at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul. (AP)