ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Four people died and three others were missing in southern Turkey after an overcrowded leisure boat sank off the Mediterranean coast early on Saturday, the state-run Anatolia news agency said. Two of the missing passengers were infants, and 21 people were in the hospital after the vessel sank around 1 a.m. local time, some 20 meters from the coastal resort town of Alanya, the agency said. Most of the passengers swam ashore in darkness, and local residents in boats rescued several people, Anatolia said. It was not clear whether any foreign tourists were aboard the vessel. Officials believe more than 100 people were on board the Paradise tour boat, which had a license permitting just 72 passengers, Alanya's administrator Gunhan Sarikaya was cited as saying.

SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria's main political forces have agreed upon a basic framework for a coalition government that should break a post-election deadlock threatening the Balkan state's EU accession path, the Socialist party said yesterday. A final deal is pending in talks over the allotment of ministries and other key issues, said Socialist leader Sergei Stanishev, tapped by his party for the prime minister's post. But the leftists, who won the June 25 election without a majority, said negotiations with ex-king Simeon Saxe-Coburg's outgoing ruling centrists and the ethnic Turkish MRF party appeared to be nearing an end. «An agreement has been reached... on policy, on the prime minister and on the structure of the government. We still need to continue talks on control mechanisms and the balance of power,» Stanishev said.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi yesterday for talks with President Vladimir Putin. Erdogan and Putin were expected to discuss economic ties and bilateral trade, which last year reached $11 billion (9.1 billion euros), said a Kremlin official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with Russian practice. The two leaders were also to discuss gas and energy issues, the political situation in Central Asia and Russia's troubled Caucasus region, and joint efforts to combat terrorism and organized crime, the official said. (AP)

A powerful explosion shattered windows at a police station and shops in a predominantly ethnic Albanian area of downtown Skopje, the capital of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, authorities said on Saturday. Police said no one was injured in the blast, which occurred at 11.20 p.m. local time on Friday when unidentified assailants threw an explosive device at a police station. (AP)