Reuters World News Highlights 1900 GMT Feb 1

www.forbes.com Reuters, 02.01.03, 2:17 PM ET

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The space shuttle Columbia broke up in the skies over Texas with seven astronauts aboard after it lost contact with NASA minutes before its scheduled landing. NASA warned local residents not to approach debris raining down on the Dallas-Fort Worth area because of the shuttle's poisonous propellant. All the astronauts were killed, NASA said.

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials said there was no immediate sign that terrorism was involved in the shuttle loss.

JERUSALEM - A rare symbol of hope for Israel vanished in three trails of smoke when the first Israeli astronaut was lost in the explosion.

BAGHDAD - Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix would travel to Iraq on February 8, but would not meet President Saddam Hussein.

LONDON/BAGHDAD - British Prime Minister Tony Blair flew home from a council of war with George W. Bush and forecast that divided world opinion would rally behind a new U.N. resolution that might authorise an attack on Iraq.

WASHINGTON/SEOUL - U.S. spy satellites show North Korea could be moving toward making nuclear warheads, U.S. officials said, as a top military commander called for more troops, bombers and ships to bolster ally South Korea.

ABIDJAN - Hundreds of thousands of protesters flooded Abidjan to denounce a French-brokered peace deal for Ivory Coast, as West African leaders made a last bid to save the tottering accord.

HARARE - At least 40 people were killed and 60 injured when a passenger train collided with a goods train, derailed and caught fire in Zimbabwe.

GAZA - Israeli troops shot dead an armed Palestinian in a Gaza Strip border zone and imposed a curfew on the West Bank city of Hebron in a renewed military crackdown following Israeli national elections.

SRINAGAR, India - Indian security forces shot dead 13 Muslim rebels in gunbattles in India's part of Kashmir, police said.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Eight suspects have been arrested after an explosion near the southern city of Kandahar that killed up to nine people in a minibus, officials said.

ZAGREB - Doctors appointed by the Hague war crimes tribunal have determined that indicted Croat General Janko Bobetko is medically unfit to stand trial, the Croatian daily newspaper Vjesnik reported.

NAPLES, Italy - Italian police found a photograph of Britain's most senior military man, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, in an apartment where they arrested 28 Pakistanis in a big anti-terror raid, judicial and police sources said.

BERLIN - Iraq will launch thousands of suicide attackers against U.S. troops if the United States invades, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan told the German magazine Der Spiegel.

BUDAPEST - The U.S. military began training Iraqi volunteers at a Hungarian air base to be guides and support for international troops in the event of any war against Iraq.

ISTANBUL - Turkey's influential military appeared on to have given the reluctant government a firm push towards actively supporting the United States in any war on Iraq.

BANGKOK/PHNOM PENH - Thailand accused Cambodian politicians of starting anti-Thai riots in Phnom Penh as authorities there charged 43 people, including a newspaper editor, over the violence.

CARACAS, Venezuela - A six-nation "group of friends" appealed to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his foes to settle their conflict through elections after hundreds of thousands of opposition protesters clamored in Caracas for an early election.