FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
The British Parliament passed a law last week allowing the government to restrict access to information that could be used to build nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. The Export Control Act covers information transmitted verbally, electronically or in print for the first time. Campaigners for academic freedom won a last-minute amendment requiring any controls on research communications to be 鈥渘o more than is necessary鈥�. But there are fears that the law might hamper research by discouraging publication of gene sequences that could be used in bioweapons, for example.
RETURN OF A KILLER
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Dengue fever is back with a vengeance, according to the World Health Organization. Asia and Latin America are being hardest hit by the mosquito-borne virus this year, says Jose Esparza, the WHO鈥檚 viral vaccines coordinator. Officials say the situation looks frighteningly similar to 1998, when a record 1.2 million people were infected worldwide. With no drug to cure or prevent the disease, the WHO is calling for mosquito eradication programmes to be stepped up.
MEDIEVAL GRAND MASTERS
The discovery of an ancient ivory chesspiece in Albania has proved that Europeans started playing the game during the 6th century AD, 500 years earlier than thought. Dug from the remains of a Byzantine palace at Butrint in southern Albania, the piece has a small cross on top, and could be a king or a queen, says Richard Hodges of the University of East Anglia, who led the excavation. The game originated in Asia around the 5th century AD.