Outlaw human cloning: UN
The international community should outlaw reproductive human cloning or quickly adopt strict rules overseeing its use, a top UN official said on Sunday, one day before the release of a UN major study on the subject. "Failure to outlaw reproductive cloning means it is just a matter of time until cloned individuals share the planet," Brendan Tobin of the Irish Center for Human Rights in Galway, Ireland ,and one of the chief authors of the UN study said. The report scheduled for release yesterday warns that humans created from reproductive cloning face potential abuse, prejudice and discrimination.
■ UNITED STATES
Suspect in killing dead
A Pakistani businessman suspected of playing a role in the brutal 2002 killing of US journalist Daniel Pearl died earlier this year, shortly after being interrogated by US and Pakistani intelligence, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The Journal said Karachi businessman Saud Memon became a key suspect in the case because he owned a nursery where Pearl had been held captive. Citing an unnamed US law enforcement official, it said Memon was interrogated by both US and Pakistani intelligence services. Memon's family and human rights groups said that in April, the businessman was left in front of his Karachi home badly injured and emaciated, the report said. About a month later, he died from what was described as complications from meningitis and tuberculosis, the Journal said.
■ UNITED STATES
Cacao drink started as beer
Natives of Central America were drinking beverages made from cacao before 1000BC, 500 years earlier than previously thought, a study released by Cornell University in New York yesterday said. These early cacao beverages were probably alcoholic brews, or beers, made from the fermented pulp of the cacao fruit, rather than the frothy chocolate-flavored drink made from the seed of the cacao tree that was an important feature of later Mesoamerican culture. But in brewing up this primitive beer, the Mesoamericans may have stumbled on the secret to making chocolate-flavored drinks, the paper said.
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