BUCHAREST (AP) – Five people drowned and two were missing after severe floods in eastern Romania over the last 24 hours, local authorities said yesterday. Two elderly women, aged 73 and 84, were found drowned in the town of Tecuci in Galati county, the worst hit by the flooding, Mayor Eduard Finkelstein said. Three other people were killed in neighboring Vrancea county, where police were still looking for a woman who went missing on Wednesday evening. Another person was also missing in Vaslui county, in northeastern Romania. Realitatea TV station showed residents seeking refuge on their roofs when Tecuci was submerged by water.

SARAJEVO (AP) – Bosnia must reform its police or face international isolation, the country’s top international official told lawmakers yesterday. Slovak diplomat Miroslav Lajcak told parliament they had to accept the “rules of the game” if they wanted to join the European Union and merge the two police forces of the divided country. “Isolation or integration – this is your choice and your responsibility at the moment,” Lajcak, who works for the international guarantors of the Dayton Accords, told parliament yesterday.

Six young people drowned in a Turkish reservoir as they tried in vain to save a six-year-old who had fallen in, Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. The seven, who were all related, had gone to the giant Ataturk Dam in the province of Sanliurfa in southeast Turkey to wash carpets. The youngest of the group, Esra, lost her balance and fell into the water, the agency quoted the local governor as saying. The other six youngsters, aged between 12 and 20, all perished after jumping in to try to save her, the agency said. (Reuters)

Two Croatian firefighters died overnight from burns suffered while battling wildfires on an Adriatic island of Kornat, the Health Ministry said yesterday. The latest deaths take to 11 the total number of firemen killed since the blaze broke out on Kornat a week ago, the worst incident of its kind in the country. (AFP)

A shipwreck from the imperial Roman era, found off Cyprus, could lead to the discovery of vessels sunk in antiquity’s largest naval engagement, the Battle of Salamis in 306 BC, said an official statement yesterday. “According to (historian) Diodoros, it was somewhere in the area where in 306 BC the Macedonian (King) Demetrius Poliorketes triumphed over Ptolemy of Egypt in one of the largest naval battles of antiquity,” said Cyprus’s Antiquities Department. More than 300 ships were believed to have been engaged in the battle that saw Demetrius capture Cyprus. The Roman ship, dating from the first century AD, was discovered sunk off Cape Greco on the southeast coast during an underwater survey. (AFP)