ON October 31, 1992, Pope John Paul II apologised on behalf of the Vatican for the persecution of Galileo Galilei over 350 years earlier. Poor Galileo had the nerve to say that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of our universe.

The world is seeing an explosion in dengue infections as the virus-carrying Aedes mosquito adapts to city environments and grows immune to traditional methods of population control, a panel of experts in Singapore said today.