Rants and Raves

Rants —

Students in Singapore are being encouraged to be fruitful and multiply in an attempt to fight declining birth rates.

The oldest giant panda in Japan, 22-year-old Ling Ling, has died of heart failure.

Raves —

A scientist from the Missouri Botanical Garden has discovered, or, rather, rediscovered, a rare parasitic plant in Mexico.

On April 19, a group of three astronauts and cosmonauts veered several hundred miles off course on their return from a mission to the International Space Station. Their Soyuz capsule landed in the remote Kazakh steppes of Central Asia, where a group of passing nomads rescued them.