ats:
"A Japanese woman in her 50s gave birth to her own grandchild last year, using an egg from her daughter and sperm from her son-in-law, a doctor has revealed."
"It was the first time a woman has acted as a surrogate mother for her daughter in Japan, local media reported."
I think the BBC headline writer may have got the wrong end of the stick here, since I don't think this is actually that uncommon elsewhere in the world.
(For example, I know a family who did this recently...)
ats:
"All new religious schools could have to offer at least 25% of their classroom places to "non-believing" children, the BBC has learned."
Erm. Good?
Otherwise "faith schools" are essentially religious ghettoes, and I certainly don't want children being brought up in that environment.
Perhaps there's some aspect of the argument here I'm not understanding, but given that living in the UK does mean dealing with a wide variety of religious viewpoints, I don't really see how restricting children to one is at all a good idea.
ats:
"In late June, the [Indian] Commerce Ministry issued a notification putting a temporary halt in the international trade of pulses and lentils till the end of the year, but later extended it to March 2007."
The price rises seem to mostly be affecting the US at the moment, but it did merit a brief note in the Observer this morning.
Hopefully the UK's lentil stockpile will be sufficient to ride out the shortage...
At least, I won't be panic-buying pulses any time soon.
David: Oh my word.
What have we done to deserve this?
ats: Ah, ftn. One of those channels that shows up on my MythTV machine, but I've never found any reason to watch.
I see today's programmes include "Laid Bare 5" ("Documentary series looking at the world of adult entertainment."), "Street Crime UK", "Retail Therapy", "Date My Sister", "The Hairdresser" and "Booze Britain 2: Binge Nation".
I wish I were making this up.
David: From time to time they have some reasonable sci-fi on ... although I can't remember the last time that was