French ornithologists are waging an increasingly sophisticated war against the hunting of the ortolan, a songbird which is regarded by gastronomes – when eaten beak, bones and all – as the ultimate in sinful pleasure. Over the next two weeks, bird lovers in south-west France will be systematically springing "live" traps set to capture the tiny » Read More
Post in Others
It may be possible to devise a simple breath test for cancer that could be made available in a GP's surgery, scientists believe. In a small but successful study, a prototype breath test was able not only to detect cancer, but also to differentiate between the four most common forms of cancer: lung, bowel, breast and » Read More
Post in Others
Would you be prepared to sacrifice your testicles, stomach fat or ears for the sake of high-class cuisine? A soon-to-open Berlin restaurant is touting for diners willing to do just that: donate body parts that it says it will turn into gourmet meals according to the age-old cooking habits of an Amazonian tribe infamous for » Read More
Post in Others
French wine will soon be "like Coca-Cola", a senior French wine official said this week. The statement was not a complaint. It was a boast. A few years ago, such a declaration by a senior figure in the French wine industry would have been equivalent to the Vatican questioning the virgin birth of Christ. This » Read More
Post in Others
With the Thames and a thousand memories, most of them concerning a certain Johnny Haynes, meandering by, Craven Cottage is surely one of the more agreeable football venues on earth. However, it was plainly not something worth mentioning to Fabio Capello this last Sunday afternoon. The Cottage, it is reasonable to assume, was pretty much his » Read More
Post in Others
Thousands of young people gave up their scramble for a university place yesterday as the search for the few remaining vacancies intensified. UCAS, the university and college admissions service, revealed that nearly 8,000 would-be students had withdrawn from the clearing scheme during the past 24 hours. About 50,000 others rejected offers made to them – possibly from » Read More
Post in Others
These days, they're setting the standard: Jerry Yang, say, the co-founder of Yahoo; or Steven Chu, Nobel Prize-winner and now President Obama's Energy Secretary; or Michelle Kwan, the champion figure skater, to name but three. I refer, of course, to Chinese-Americans. Not that long ago, however, there was only one Chinese American who mattered – and » Read More
Post in Others
Some people achieve transporting bliss through meditation, prayer or exercise, but I've found that a pig competition in a village show does the job for me. It's hard to explain, but the spectacle of boars, sows and gilts (females yet to have a litter), whether snoozing in their pens, rooting for food or trotting round » Read More
Post in Others
"The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King," Hamlet famously plotted. For Tony Blair it was not a play so much as an autobiography which has perhaps performed the same function. The former prime minister is handing over all the profits from his autobiography – starting with the $4.6m advance – to » Read More
Post in Others
He should never have reached this milestone. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, stricken with terminal cancer, was given less than three months to live when he was spirited out of Greenock Prison and home to a delirious reception in Libya. But this week, the Lockerbie bomber, with his wife and five children, will mark the first anniversary of » Read More
Post in Others
