ANKARA (AP) - Airports in Turkey have been placed on the second highest level of alert following intelligence that the Al Qaeda terror network may be planning attacks similar to the Sept. 11 attacks, a newspaper reported yesterday. Turkish officials received intelligence warning that Osama bin Ladin’s terror network may either hijack a plane to crash it into a target or detonate an explosive device on board a plane, the Milliyet newspaper reported. It did not say what the target might be. It said the intelligence came on July 16 from an “important source,” but gave no further details.

ANKARA (AFP) - Turkey’s main opposition party said yesterday it would seek to reconvene Parliament to censure the transport minister after 38 people died in a train accident, the Anatolia news agency reported. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) will ask Parliament, currently in summer recess, to reconvene for an extraordinary session in August to take up the issue, CHP Deputy Chairman Esref Erdem told reporters, Anatolia said. The Turkish government has come under blistering fire for launching a fast express service on decade-old tracks. “Inaugurating a fast train without preparing a proper infrastructure is nothing but a murder,” Erdem said.

Bulgaria yesterday rejected a Libyan proposal for a deal to save five Bulgarian nurses convicted of deliberately infecting children with AIDS from a firing squad and insisted that they were innocent. Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelrahman Shalgham proposed that the Bulgarian government negotiate with the families of more than 400 children who were allegedly injected with the HIV virus in a paediatric hospital in the northern Libyan city of Benghazi. Shalgham declined to say what form a settlement could take, but other Libyan officials have raised the possibility of compensation payments to the families. (AFP)

Just like the Trojans, the modern nation of Turkey is about to welcome a gigantic hollow horse into its borders. But this one bears no threat. Warner Bros. representatives said the studio plans to sign a permanent loan agreement with the Turkish government to display the prop “wooden” horse from the recent Brad Pitt movie. It is expected to be showcased near the location where archaeologists believe the ancient city once stood, close to the Dardanelles, the narrow waterway through which ships have to pass from the Aegean Sea to enter the Black Sea. (AP)