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World News Quick Take

■ Indonesia
Dengue outbreak kills 91
An outbreak of dengue fever has killed 91 people in six Indonesian provinces since the start of the year, a health official said yesterday. The densely-populated Java island is the worst hit, with at least 38 people reported dead in East Java province and 17 others in the capital Jakarta, health ministry spokeswoman Mariani Reksoprojo said. "The situation is dire and needs immediate handling," she said. About 4,500 people in the six provinces have also been hospitalized with the mosquito-transmitted disease, Reksoprojo said.

■ China
Radiation warning sounded
Authorities have sealed off a steel smelter in central China where a stolen canister of radioactive Cesium-137 is believed to have been mistaken for scrap metal and melted, officials and state media said yesterday. Police have arrested "quite a few" suspects in the theft of the radioactive material from a power plant building site, said officials who asked not to be identified further. There has been no indication that Chinese authorities believe the canister was stolen to obtain the Cesium. The steel plant in Shaanxi province was evacuated and the surrounding area sealed off after experts searching for the Cesium on Friday found radioactive contamination there.

■ China
Children grow faster
China's children are outgrowing free lunches and bus rides. Since the 1949 communist revolution, China has given children free bus fares, amusement park admission and other services -- so long as they are below age 7 and under 1.1m tall. But many are now excluded because, with better nutrition and health care, even the average 5-year-old is 1.2m tall, the official Xinhua News Agency said yesterday. Today's average 5-year-old is 10cm taller than in 1949, according to Xinhua.

■ Singapore
Taxis to offer new perks
A new taxi company in Singapore will offer perks including wet towels, air purifiers and a choice of CDs to passengers beginning March 1. The innovations come at no extra charge, Premier Taxi said yesterday. Starting with 50 metallic silver-colored cabs, the company hopes to have at least 200 taxis on the road by the end of the year. Two other new cab companies, Smart and Trans-Cab, are also expanding their fleets barely a month after launching. The three long-timers in Singapore -- Comfort, CityCab and Tibs -- have a total of nearly 19,000 cabs. Premier is not only relying on its silver shine to dazzle passengers.

■ Australia
Police nab Knievel clone
Australian police have nabbed a daredevil motorcyclist who taunted them for weeks by racing through the Sydney Harbor Tunnel in the pre-dawn hours at speeds of up to 220kph, officials said yesterday. The racer was caught after police on Monday set a trap nicknamed Operation Knievel. The man allegedly raced through the 2.3km-long tunnel repeatedly over several weeks at speeds of between 159kph and 220kph, police said. The tunnel speed limit is 80kph. The rider eluded the stationary security cameras along the roadway by covering his number plates. Police stationed officers at the tunnel's entrance and exit. But the speedster escaped the trap, outracing police in a 200kph chase. But the hot pursuit proved to be the motorcyclist's undoing as police noted some of his license plate numbers and finally tracked down a 31-year-old man.

■ Saudi Arabia
UK warns against travel
Terrorists may be "in the final stages" of preparing more attacks in Saudi Arabia, the British government warned on Monday, advising its citizens not to travel to the country. The unusually strong-worded statement followed the cancellation of a British Airways flight from London to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on Monday, which was called off last week due to unspecified security fears. "Following terrorist attacks in Riyadh in May and November 2003, we believe that terrorists remain determined to carry out further attacks in Saudi Arabia," the Foreign Office said on its Web site.

■ Iran
Khatami fights ballot boycott
President Mohammad Khatami on Monday called on Iranians not to boycott Friday's parliamentary elections despite the mass removal of reformist candidates from the ballot, the students' news agency ISNA reported. "Although you might not find your favorite candidate in every constituency, your dissatisfaction should not lead to frustration and election boycott," Khatami said in an unprecedented statement four days before the elections. "Even if you cannot vote for the candidates you want, do at least not allow those you dislike to enter the parliament," Khatami said.

■ United States
Medicine linked to cancer
A study suggests antibiotics might increase the risk of developing breast cancer, but researchers in Chicago said the data should not stop women from taking the medication. Women who took the most antibiotics -- who had more than 25 prescriptions, or who took the drugs for at least 501 days -- faced double the risk of developing breast cancer over an average of about 17 years, compared with women who didn't use the drugs, the study showed. The authors said more research is needed because it could have been the diseases women used antibiotics to treat -- rather than the drugs themselves -- that increased breast cancer risk.

■ United Kingdom
Viking burial boat found
The first Viking boat burial site ever discovered in England has been found by a pair of amateur treasure hunters using a metal detector, British reports said yesterday. The duo uncovered a hoard of silver coins, fragments of swords and shields and other items from the late ninth century, notably some iron "clinch nails" which experts think were used to construct a Viking longboat, The Times said. The location of the site in the Yorkshire region of northern England is being kept secret until it is properly excavated, with archaeologists believing it could be the burial site of an affluent warrior with his boat, the report said.

■ Denmark
Inmates riot over gym rules
Danish prison guards and politicians said Monday they would not bow to rioting prisoners' demands to ease restrictions on the kind of weights permitted in the gyms of Danish jails, media reported. Inmates at Nyborg prison, in southern Denmark, rioted Sunday in protest against new rules banning weights heavier than 30kg. The rule, introduced as part of a program aimed at limiting the use of anabolic steroids, has been enforced in all Danish prisons. Instead of bowing to the prisoners' demands and removing the restrictions, Danish Justice Minister Lene Espersen said Monday that the rules would be enforced with a new vigor.

■ War on Iraq
Blix blasts Bush, Blair
Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has accused US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of being on a "witch hunt" leading up to the war in Iraq. In a German press article that was to appear yesterday, Blix criticized the US and Britain for their "credulous and scandalously foolish" behavior in the Iraq crisis. "We said before the war that there was no proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but they ignored that," he told the Mannheimer Morgen daily. Blix said he did not believe Bush or Blair deliberately lied to the public over weapons of mass destruction. But he said Bush and Blair "were on a witch hunt and now bear the responsibility", he said.

■ Venezuela
Referendum in trouble
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government said on Monday it would not allow international observers to overrule local electoral authorities on whether the leftist leader should face a recall referendum. In a further sign that Venezuela's referendum process was running into trouble, Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel delivered the warning to a visiting US envoy, Peter DeShazo, at a time when the credibility of the country's national electoral body was increasingly under fire. Opponents of Chavez accuse the National Electoral Council of siding with the populist president by using technical objections to obstruct their signature petition seeking a recall vote against him this year.

■ France
Reformed terrorist arrested
A reformed Italian terrorist turned successful crime writer has been arrested and faces extradition from France, despite a long-standing promise that Paris would always provide a safe haven for one-time Red Brigades militants. The arrest last week of Cesare Battisti, who has lived peaceably and openly in the French capital since 1990, has prompted a storm of protest. Opponents say the government has broken a 1985 pledge by the late Socialist president, Francois Mitterrand, that members of the far-left terror cells whose bombings and assassinations rocked Italy in the 1970s and 1980s would be left in peace in France provided they renounced their past, did not go into hiding and kept out of politics.

■ Kuwait
25 US soldiers in accident
Twenty-five US soldiers were injured, four seriously, when their bus rolled over near a Kuwaiti air base on the weekend, a spokesman for the US military said yesterday. The Kuwaiti authorities are investigating the accident, which happened on Sunday afternoon near the Ali Al Salem air base, Captain Randall Baucom said. The four soldiers who were seriously wounded were admitted to the Kuwait Armed Forces hospital. The other injured were treated at various US camps in Kuwait, Baucom said.

■ United Kingdom
Scotland appoints poet
Having recently acquired regional assemblies, Scotland and Wales are now demanding national poets, the Times said yesterday. The countries are seeking to create their own alternatives to the Poet Laureate. On Monday, Scotland created its own equivalent, with the regional government naming Edwin Morgan, 83, as the "Scots Makar," an old Scottish term for a poet. Wales' official literary promotion authority said it was also in talks with the government over creating its own official poet.

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