World Highlights

¤ Nigerian militants released four foreign oil workers yesterday, ending a 19-day hostage crisis, but threatened another wave of attacks on oil facilities in the world's eighth-largest exporter. The hostages - an American, Briton, Bulgarian and Honduran - were abducted from an offshore oilfield in the southern Niger Delta on January 11 during a six-week campaign of attacks on oil platforms and pipelines which cut output by a tenth.

¤ All 72 miners who had been trapped underground by a fire in a Western Canadian potash mine were being reunited with their families yesterday, amid relief no one was injured during the 30-hour ordeal. Officials at the mine, owned by Minnesota-based Mosaic Co., said an investigation into what caused the fire will begin immediately and could be completed this week.

¤ The oldest daughter of former dictator Augusto Pinochet was released on bail in a tax evasion case yesterday, two days after she returned home and withdrew a bid for political asylum in the US. A Santiago appeals court freed Lucia Pinochet Hiriart on $6,000 bail, court officials said.

¤ US television news anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt arrived in Germany for further treatment yesterday at a US military hospital after being injured in a roadside blast in Iraq. Marie Shaw, a spokesman at Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre in western Germany, said the two from ABC News arrived at 8.30 a.m. (0730 GMT). She said doctors reported "good signs of early reaction and slow improvement".

¤ The Polish government ordered the closure of some large buildings and discussed tightening building regulations yesterday, fearing more roofs may collapse after the weekend disaster that killed more than 60 people.

¤ Jury selection got under way yesterday in the long-awaited trial of former Enron Corp. chiefs Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling for their roles in the spectacular 2001 collapse of the former energy trading giant. A pool of more than 100 potential jurors reported at dawn to the US courthouse in downtown Houston where 12 jurors and four alternates are to be chosen to hear the case.

¤ Kuwait's new emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah accepted the resignation of the Cabinet yesterday, a day after he was sworn in as ruler of the important Gulf Arab oil producer and US ally, state media said. The 15th emir of the Sabah dynasty is likely to name a Prime Minister before the end of this week.

¤ London's police chief Ian Blair told a newspaper yesterday his force made errors in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of an innocent Brazilian man whom officers mistook for a suicide bomber. Mr Blair, who is facing an investigation by an independent watchdog over comments he made after Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police last July, said in an interview with the Guardian that false reports in the media should have been immediately corrected.