A little flying saucer not much bigger than a washing machine will separate from its mother ship early on Saturday morning on the last stage of a long journey to oblivion. If all goes to plan, the European lander Huygens will ease away from a lorry-sized Nasa orbiter called Cassini for a date with death and glory.

Fox TV is under pressure to abandon a scheduled adoption gameshow, Who’s Your Daddy?, after thousands of people protested at the programme in which children try to identify their father for a  000 prize. The mother of a five-year-old adopted daughter has led the grassroots campaign that prompted 5 000 people to complain to the network that the programme, due to be screened in the new year, is insensitive and offensive.

Ukraine’s opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko is on course for a clear victory in a Boxing Day repeat of the run-off vote for the country’s presidency, according to an opinion poll released on Thursday. Yushchenko has increased his lead over the prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, to 14 percentage points, leaving Yanukovich trailing with 37% of the vote, a poll by the Social Monitoring centre said.

The former British foreign secretary Robin Cook is backing a Europe-wide petition to help children orphaned by Aids in Africa by switching to them â,¬5bn in subsidies from rich European Union farmers. The petition, also backed by the former British culture secretary Chris Smith, comes as 2005 is designated a year for Africa.

A cat lover in Texas has become the world’s first owner of a cloned-to-order feline, paying  000 for a genetic duplicate of her dead pet. Now eight weeks old, Little Nicky was produced by a California company, Genetic Savings & Clone. The creature’s owner, a woman in her 40s who works in the airline industry, said she was delighted with the result.