World dateline briefs

Bangladesh: Collapse

DHAKA — A four-story apartment building constructed on a former canal collapsed in Bangladesh's capital, burying nearby shanties and killing at least 20 people, authorities said Wednesday.

Fire official Abdus Salam said six people had been rescued and were taken to a hospital, but others were still trapped in the rubble and feared dead.

"We see more people crushed under the debris," Salam told The Associated Press from the site of the accident in Dhaka's central Tejgaon district. "So the death toll is likely to go up."

Twenty bodies had been recovered.

Kenya: Ship retaken

NAIROBI — The crew of a Libyan-owned cargo ship pounced on their sleeping Somali captors Wednesday, disarmed the pirates and killed five of them, regaining control of their vessel that had been hijacked almost three months earlier, officials said.

A sixth pirate who survived the attack by the MV Rim crew managed to lock himself in a room and call other pirates to say they had been overpowered before the crew took him hostage, said Abdiaziz Aw Yusuf, the Garacad district commissioner. Garacad is the coastal town near which the MV Rim has been anchored.

A crew member was seriously injured during the struggle, the European Union's anti-piracy naval force said in a statement.

Germany: Top cleric

BERLIN — German prosecutors are investigating allegations that the country's top Roman Catholic cleric was responsible in the 1980s for hiring a priest known to have sexually abused minors, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The investigation of Freiburg Archbishop Robert Zollitsch is based solely on a complaint by a person who claims to have been abused, and the allegations haven't yet been scrutinized, Prosecutor Wolfgang Maier said.

Zollitsch also heads the German Bishops Conference. Archdiocese spokesman Robert Eberle rejected as baseless the allegation that he was an accessory to abuse of minors by omission.

Switzerland: Poker ban

GENEVA — Texas hold 'em is a game of luck.

That's the opinion at least of Switzerland's highest court, which banned tournaments of the high-stakes poker game outside of casinos.