Nosedive.

News Items Weekend Edition.

---

“It’s the first thing I read every day.” — Brigadier General (retired) Russ Howard, founding director of The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

---

---

1. A US startup company is offering to help wealthy couples screen their embryos for IQ using controversial technology that raises questions about the ethics of genetic enhancement. The company, Heliospect Genomics, has worked with more than a dozen couples undergoing IVF, according to undercover video footage. The recordings show the company marketing its services at up to $50,000 (£38,000) for clients seeking to test 100 embryos, and claiming to have helped some parents select future children based on genetic predictions of intelligence. Managers boasted their methods could produce a gain of more than six IQ points. The Heliospect Genomics website is worth a look (Source: theguardian.com, heliospectgenomics.com)

---

2. South China Morning Post:

If China’s fertility rate remains on its downward trajectory, for every newborn in the future, six people would die – a trend that threatens to intensify the nation’s demographic crisis, a demographer has cautioned.

“With the current half-hearted incentive policies, not only is it impossible to raise the fertility rate, but even maintaining it at 1.0 seems out of reach,” warned a recent report published by the YuWa Population Research Institute.

“Anti-marriage and anti-childbearing sentiments are intensifying, and the pro-birth policies aren’t even enough to counter this downward trend.”