When teachers at Herder school in north Germany discovered a chocolate cake outside their room, they suspected nothing. Pupils had often brought in cakes to raise money for charity, so staff sliced it up and tucked in. But before too long, 10 teachers from the elite school in Lüneburg started trembling, feeling unwell and suffering from hallucinations.

South Korean and United States scientists have cloned human embryos and successfully extracted stem cells from one of them. The research opens the way for once-undreamed of treatments for long-term diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. It also reignites the simmering debate about human cloning.

A battle for control over the Nile has broken out between Egypt, which regards the world’s longest river as its lifeblood, and the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, which complain that they are denied a fair share of its water.

It really is time we were rid of the exercise in the vainglorious called the opening of Parliament. Apart from obvious reasons, like the steadily mounting costs of the affair, there are many other grounds for abandoning what has become a toe-curling embarrassment.