Plus ca change

Cautious journalists know the risk of identifying achievements/breakthroughs/discoveries etc as "world firsts". You certainy got the impression from BBC reports over recent days that Newcastle University was way ahead in the science of "genetically altering" embryos to avoid risks of certain serious genetic disorders in babies.

Ironically it was the BBC who first revealed that 30 genetically-altered babies had been born, and born healthy, in the United States in 2001. Shortly after the story came out, the US Government banned the technique.  Which the UK may now allow.

Roker Park

The price of misplaced honesty is parody, it seems. NBC weatherman Al Roker has had gastric bypass surgery, and, in a tv interview about his health and keeping fit, described an uncomfortable loss-of-control moment at the White House.

Here's some of the interview, set to music.

Hard bitten

The BBC's Allan Little now stands alongside George W Bush, Ben Stiller, Amy Tan and Daryl Hall. The Scotsman reports this morning that our intrepid correspondent is suffering from Lyme's Disease - from a tick bite, not in some foreign battlefield, but on holiday in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

The ticks give you a dose of the bacteria Borrelia Burgdorferi Sensu Stricto, usually cleared by anti-biotics as long as you get to the so-and-so's fast enough. The disease gets its name from an outbreak in 1975, in Lyme, Connecticut, some 150 miles down the coast from the Cape.

What went wrong

CBS reporter Serene Branson - of the burbling red carpet report from the Grammy Awards - was suffering from something called a "migraine with aura", reports the Los Angeles Times.

Often, aura symptoms are visual distortions - and this US site has both video and artistic interpretations of what an attack feels like for the sufferer.  Other symptoms are like tinnitus, which can make it impossible to get words out.