ANKARA (AP) - A methane explosion in a coal mine in eastern Turkey yesterday killed five workers and injured 23 others, officials said. Three workers were still trapped inside yesterday evening, with rescuers trying to reach them. The explosion caused the collapse of a mine shaft in the town of Askale, 700 kilometers (440 miles) east of the capital, Ankara. The local governor’s office said the explosion occurred 500 meters (1,650 feet) underground. Four of the injured were in critical condition in hospital, the Anatolia news agency reported.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish authorities are investigating 47 village leaders on charges they siphoned money from a toilet-building project to hire prostitutes, a Turkish newspaper reported yesterday. Dubbed “A Toilet for Every Village,” the state-sponsored project provided cement, steel and other supplies to rural areas without proper sewers in poverty-stricken eastern Turkey. The village leaders allegedly sold the supplies and went to the Black Sea city of Trabzon, where they spent the money on foreign prostitutes, the mainstream Hurriyet newspaper said.

Two ships that sank in the Danube during World War II in southwestern Romania have resurfaced as a result of the drought and low water levels and risked blocking traffic on the river, port authorities said yesterday. “The wrecks could pose a danger to traffic on the Danube because most ships have not been warned about their presence in the water and for the moment we have no way of moving them out of the way,” said Mihai Ghiba, one of the port masters at Gruia. “The only people who are having any fun with the wrecks are the children who use them as diving boards,” he added. (AFP)

Belgian police chased down a tour bus that was reported hijacked only to learn that the Romanian soccer fans on board had persuaded the driver to take them to the beach after watching their team lose in Belgium. After watching Rapid Bucharest lose to Belgium’s Anderlecht on Wednesday, the fans were told they would have to wait for hours before being able to return home, a spokesman for the Brussels public prosecutor’s office said. They then decided to spend the day soaking up the sun on the Belgian coast. He said the bus driver probably felt “morally obliged” to go along but things went awry when he told the bus company, which mistakenly interpreted it as a hijacking and alerted police. Police became really suspicious when the bus suddenly came to a halt on the very busy ring road around Brussels and two men got out. It later turned out the men had simply wanted to relieve themselves and were mistakenly left behind. “(It was as if) I was Osama bin Laden and they were US forces,” one fan told local VTM television. No one was arrested. (Reuters)