Reuters World News Highlights 1400 GMT Feb 2

www.forbes.com Reuters, 02.02.03, 9:06 AM ET

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas - As Americans mourned the deaths of seven astronauts, teams of police and soldiers fanned across Texas searching for clues as to what caused the space shuttle Columbia to break apart as it returned to Earth, just 16 minutes from landing at its base. President George W. Bush vowed the space shuttle program would continue.

MOSCOW - A Russian cargo rocket carrying fuel and food to the International Space Station blasted off from Russia's cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, a day the Columbia disaster.

BAGHDAD - Doubts over a possible visit to Iraq by top U.N. arms inspectors this week deepened when an Iraqi official appeared to reject conditions they had set for the trip.

BAGHDAD - U.N. weapons inspectors combed more sites in Iraq for prohibited weapons.

WASHINGTON - It substitutes pure energy for munitions. It is designed to achieve military objectives without killing people or wrecking buildings. Saddam Hussein's armed forces could become the first targets of a U.S. microwave secret weapon.

NEW YORK - In the U.S. war plan for Iraq, more than 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles would pound the Iraqi military in the first 48 hours, paving the way for a two-pronged ground invasion to topple Saddam's government, The New York Times said.

LAGOS - An explosion ripped open the front of a four-storey bank in central Lagos, killing at least 20 people.

ABIDJAN - Opposition supporters stormed onto Abidjan streets and burned barricades after the suspected killing of a comedian triggered their biggest protest since Ivory Coast's four-month civil war began. An aide to the president said renegotiation of a French-brokered peace accord was inevitable. Pope John Paul urged a reconciliation.

BERLIN - Germans voted in two state elections expected to inflict crushing defeats on Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats for presiding over mass unemployment, near-recession and unpopular tax hikes.

ATHENS - Greek police arrested a local politician suspected of belonging to the Popular Revolutionary Struggle urban guerrilla group, held responsible for more than 300 bomb attacks and two deaths in 20 years.

BELFAST - A senior Protestant guerrilla was shot dead and a second man also killed in an ambush late on Saturday in Belfast, the latest bloodshed in a spiralling feud within Northern Ireland's outlawed "loyalist" Ulster Defence Association.

BEIJING - An unemployed Chinese man armed with a soft drink can containing fuel tried to hijack a plane on an internal flight and take it to Taiwan, but was thwarted, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

SEOUL - South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-hyun sent an envoy to Washington to explain his policies on North Korea, amid ominous signs that the crisis involving the communist state's nuclear programme was deepening.

BOGOTA, Colombia - Marxist Colombian rebels freed a British reporter and a U.S. photographer after holding them hostage for nearly two weeks, hiding all the while from army attack.

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan opposition leaders staging a strike to oust President Hugo Chavez said they would scale back the faltering economic shutdown as they focused on a fresh campaign for early elections.