A 38-STONE woman gave birth by Caesarian section to a healthy baby in Romania yesterday.

Eight wedding guests were killed after a train in southern Romania slammed into a bus that was taking them home today.

Sizzling temperatures in Greece, Italy and Romania have brought power cuts and brush fires in a heatwave that has led to at least 38 deaths in south-east Europe in recent days.

Eleven people were killed and three are still missing in flash floods that hit northern and eastern Romania, submerging roads, farms and houses.

THE Danube river broke through flood defences in southeastern Europe yesterday, driving thousands of people from their homes along its banks in Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria, officials said.

Emergency crews and volunteers struggled to keep embankments and sand barriers from giving way yesterday amid record flooding along the Danube and its tributaries in northern Serbia and elsewhere in the Balkans.

Preliminary tests have indicated several new cases of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in domestic fowl in eastern and southern Romania, authorities said today.

A bus carrying textile workers crashed into a tree in southern Romania today, killing at least 13 people and critically injuring another six, police said.