Bill Clinton, the former US president, checked himself into a New York City hospital on Friday for heart bypass surgery after suffering chest pains and a shortness of breath. ”He will be having surgery early in the week,” his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton said last night after visiting her husband in hospital.

John Kerry launched a stinging and personal counter-attack against George Bush’s administration, singling out Dick Cheney, the vice-president, for having ”refused to serve” in Vietnam. The ferocity of the Democratic party’s presidential challenger marked a sharp change in his campaign tactics.

The Amazon rainforest and savanna lands are being destroyed at a rate of 1,2-million hectares a year to feed Europe’s insatiable desire for more soya bean production, according to a research report on Friday. The UK is one of the chief customers for South American soya production.

The United States has praised South Africa for acting against Pakistan scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan’s secret nuclear network after a local businessman was charged with nuclear trafficking. He had allegedly used the network in efforts to help Libya develop an atomic weapons programme.

World leaders expressed horror on Friday at the bloody end to the Russian hostage crisis, calling it a tragedy that resulted from a ”nauseating” and ”barbaric” terrorist attack. United States President George Bush said the large-scale hostage-taking in Russia was ”another grim reminder” of terrorist tactics.