Irish PM says received letters in blood over planned abortion law

By Padraic Halpin

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's prime minister said he had been sent letters written in blood and been branded a murderer by opponents of his government's plans to allow limited access to abortion, an issue that has polarized the country for decades.

Enda Kenny's government agreed draft legislation in April to allow for limited access to abortion where a woman's life is in danger, including the threat of suicide, following months of protests from both sides of the debate.

Ministers signed off on the completed legislation at a meeting on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the government said, and it hopes to enact it before parliament adjourns in July.

After about 40,000 people massed outside government offices in Dublin on Saturday in the largest anti-abortion demonstration in traditionally Roman Catholic Ireland's history, Kenny delivered a trenchant defense of the plans.

"I am now being branded by personnel around the country as being a murderer, that I am going to have on my soul the death of 20 million babies," Kenny told parliament on Wednesday, detailing how he had been sent items of Catholic regalia and threatening messages.

"I'm getting medals, scapulars, plastic fetuses, letters written in blood, telephone calls all over the system, and it's not confined to me."

A two-decade debate over how Ireland should deal with a Supreme Court ruling that abortion be permitted when a woman's life was in danger was re-opened last year after the death of a woman who was denied an abortion of her dying fetus.

Successive governments had sidestepped acting on the ruling, the result of a challenge by a 14-year-old rape victim in the so-called "X-case" of 1992 to a constitutional amendment nine years earlier that intended to ban abortion in all instances.

"LURID CLAIMS"

Kenny has been met by resistance from some among his conservative Fine Gael party as well as a concerted campaign by Ireland's once powerful Catholic Church which is putting pressure on lawmakers.

Kenny, midway through his five-year term, has kept all but one of Fine Gael's 76 members of parliament on side, even as he pushes through tough austerity measures required under an EU-IMF bailout. He has said he expects the government to vote as one on the issue, signaling any defectors could be expelled from his party.

In a strongly worded statement on Tuesday, the Catholic Bishops of Ireland accused the government of misleading people on the abortion legislation and said every citizen "should be deeply concerned" by the changes proposed.

Rocked by a series of child abuse scandals, the church's influence over society has waned since the 1980s and a younger, secular generation wants to end the practice of Irish women travelling to nearby Britain to terminate their pregnancies.

Kenny, a regular Mass-goer who delivered a once-unthinkable rebuke to the Vatican over its handling of the abuse scandals two years ago, said he did not agree with many of the statements that the bishops had made.

"My job as taoiseach (prime minister) is to lead the government in governing for the people of the country. That is not confined to any sector of the people, it is for all of the people," he said to applause from some members of parliament.

"Therefore I am proud to stand here as a public representative, as a taoiseach who happens to be a Catholic but not a Catholic taoiseach."

Opponents said Kenny's allegations of unpleasant behavior by critics of the government's abortion proposal were aimed at discrediting the anti-abortion movement.

"The taoiseach is making lurid claims again - just after the largest ever pro-life demonstration in Ireland, the National Vigil for Life last Saturday," Cora Sherlock, spokeswoman for anti-abortion group Pro Life Campaign, said in a statement.

"This is nothing more than spin designed to distract from the Bill. It's a disgusting attempt to demonize the pro-life movement rather than debate the proposed legislation."

(Editing by Pravin Char)

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Scientists say newly discovered woolly mammoth blood boosts cloning prospects

A researcher studies a mammoth carcass found on an island in the Arctic Ocean. (Northeastern Federal Universit …A team of scientists says blood recovered from the preserved carcass of a woolly mammoth is reviving hopes that the extinct creature could one day be cloned back into existence.

"When we broke the ice beneath her stomach, the blood flowed out from there. It was very dark," said Semyon Grigoryev, a Russian scientist who led the expedition that found the mammoth, in an interview with Agence France-Presse.

And Grigoryev says the well-preserved state of the mammoth offers new potential for cloning the creature, either directly through its DNA or in conjunction with another closely related mammal, such as an elephant.

"This find gives us a really good chance of finding live cells, which can help us implement this project to clone a mammoth," he said.

In 2012, North-Eastern Federal University, where Grigoryev works as a professor, enlisted the aid of controversial Sooam Biotech Research Foundation researcher Hwang Woo-Suk. In 2005, Woo-Suk made history by creating the world’s first cloned dog, but much of his work was later called into question or discredited.

The website phys.org reports that a Russian expedition discovered the mammoth carcass while conducting research in April on a remote island in the Arctic Ocean. Its body is said to have been preserved for about 10,000 to 15,000 years, roughly the time the mammoth is believed to have gone extinct.

Interestingly, the scientists discovered only the lower half of the mammoth’s body. They believe it was submerged in water at the time of its death. After the water eventually froze, they believe that predators consumed the top half of the mammoth carcass.

In a gruesome but scientifically promising detail, Grigoryev claims that blood seeped from the carcass when his team made an incision in its body.

"This is the most astonishing case in my entire life. How was it possible for it to remain in liquid form? And the muscle tissue is also red, the color of fresh meat," Grigoryev said.

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Gandhi blood sample up for auction in London

LONDON (Reuters) - Two microscope slides bearing the blood of former Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi are to go on sale in London on Tuesday and are expected to fetch from 10,000 pounds to 15,000 pounds ($15,200-$22,800).

The slides were obtained in 1924 when the father of the Indian independence movement was recovering from an appendectomy near Mumbai. He was thought to have donated the blood to the family he was staying with at the time.

"To Gandhi devotees, it has the same status as a sacred relic to a Christian," said Richard Westwood-Brookes, a historical documents expert at Mullock's auctioneers which is selling the item.

"It is an artefact which is revered by disciples of Gandhi, particularly in India and therefore that is the sort of person who would go for it," he added.

The slides are part of a larger collection of items obtained by Mullock's, which include the former leader's sandals, shawl and bed linen.

Demand for Gandhi memorabilia has been steadily growing since Mullock's sold soil samples and blades of bloody grass purportedly from the spot where Gandhi was assassinated in 1948, for 10,000 pounds ($15,200) last year.

($1 = 0.6582 British pounds)

(Reporting by Li-mei Hoang, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Norway teacher fired after children taste her blood

In response to the increased attention and concern for America's rising rates of obesity and diabetes, the food industry has responded by creating what they often refer to as "better-for-you" foods. These include, among other things: bags of dried fruit slices, organic bars and cookies, yogurts, smoothies, vegetable crisps, and, of course, baked, not fried, potato chips. In turn, these items have begun to replace the more traditional junk food found in our children's school vending machines.

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