■ BOGOTA. If you can?t trust kidnappers, who can you trust? Colombian mobile telephone users are being duped by criminals who pose as phone operators and instruct them to turn off their handsets just long enough to demand ransom from their families. Colombia, long one of the world?s kidnapping capitals, has seen a rash of cases in which mobile phone customers receive messages telling them to turn off their handsets for two hours because their telephones have been cloned, police say. The criminals then contact family members of the phone user to say that he or she has been taken hostage. Families who have no way of contacting their relative are directed where to drop off ransom money before the two hours are up. ?If you get a call telling you to turn off your handset, contact the authorities,? local television channel Caracol told viewers during a news program.

■ KATHMANDU. Man cuts off hand for Hindu goddess offering. A 23-year-old Nepali man cut off his right hand after morning prayers and offered it to Kali, the Hindu goddess of power, the Annapurna Post local daily said yesterday. Rajesh Tajpuria, who runs a drug store in the southeastern town of Rangeli, is undergoing treatment at a hospital, it said. More than 80 percent of Nepal?s 26 million people are Hindus who frequently sacrifice animals such as goats, buffaloes and roosters in temples.

■ CANBERRA. Catholic dean on leave after YouTube outburst. A Roman Catholic priest who unleashed a torrent of expletives and racist abuse against skateboarders outside his Australian cathedral, only to have the outburst filmed and placed on YouTube, has been put on leave. The Reverend Monsignor Geoff Baron, the dean of St Patrick?s Cathedral in Australia?s second biggest city, Melbourne, was videotaped swearing at and abusing a group of teenagers using the cathedral grounds as a skate park. ?Move, you f****** fool,? Baron tells one skater in the video, slapping one of the group across the head and prompting a torrent of abuse in reply. Pointing to a skater lying on the ground, Baron is heard telling the youth ?Little foreigner there, look at the sleepy eyes, black hair.? ?At least he?s got hair. You f****** bald p****,? one youth replies. Others spat on and shoved the furious priest.

■ WASHINGTON. Experts issue new physical exercise guidelines. Adults should engage in moderately intense exercise for at least 30 minutes five days a week or vigorous exercise at least 20 minutes three days each week, experts recommended yesterday. Two leading health groups issued new guidelines on physical activity, updating influential recommendations issued in 1995 while also crafting advice tailored specifically for those 65 and older.

■ BOSTON. Hormone use mixed in preventing premature births.Treatment with the female hormone progesterone cuts the risk of a premature birth in a woman with a truncated cervix, but does not prevent premature delivery if the mother is carrying twins, researchers said recently. March of Dimes spokesman Michael Katz said the findings, contained in separate studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine, should give doctors a better idea of which women are likely to benefit from progesterone treatment.

■ WASHINGTON. TB vaccine shows promise. A new tuberculosis vaccine has shown promise in animal studies, researchers said yesterday, raising hope it might replace the current vaccine that has failed to stop one of the world?s top killers. If all goes well, human trials of the new vaccine with some modifications to make it safer could start in two to three years, said one of the researchers, immunologist Dr. Steven Porcelli of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

■ LONDON Sister-to-sister transplant offers fertility hope. A previously sterile Belgian woman has successfully received ovarian tissue from her sister in an advance that could offer hope to women with cancer and other women unsuited to normal IVF treatment, scientists said. Teresa Alvaro, 37, whose ovaries failed after treatment for cancer, now has restored ovarian function following the transplant operation in February last year.

■ CHICAGO. Device wakes man with severe brain injuries. A man with severe brain injuries who spent six years in a near-vegetative state can now chew his food, watch a movie and talk with family thanks to a brain pacemaker that may change the way such patients are treated, US researchers said yesterday.

The 38-year-old man is the first person in a minimally conscious state to be treated with deep-brain stimulation, a treatment that uses a pacemaker and two electrodes to send impulses into a part of the brain regulating consciousness.