Human fertility is in crisis. Our lifestyles have unwittingly rounded on our ability to reproduce, and even with inevitable advances in medicine, experts foresee a dramatic slump in fertility.

The crisis has many fronts. Sperm counts are in freefall, while sexually transmitted diseases and obesity - both of which seriously harm our ability to reproduce - are rising sharply. Our environment, stress and the vices we embrace all chip away at our natural fertility.

And the trend towards starting families later in life continues, landing more couples in fertility clinics than ever before.

But all is not lost. Few aspects of the human body have been studied as intimately as reproduction, and while much is set by the genetic hand we are dealt at birth, research suggests that changes to our lifestyles can dramatically improve our chances of prolonging our fertility.

Here we bring together the latest scientific research on fertility, and how our life choices affect it.   more »

It is like some sort of virus. It is like some sort of weird and painful rash on your face that makes you embarrassed to walk out the door and so you sit there day after day, waiting for it to go away, slathering on ointment and Bactine and scotch. And yet still it lingers.

Some days the pain is so searing and hot you want to cut off your own head with a nail file.

Other days it is numb and pain-free and seemingly OK, to the point where you think it might finally be all gone and you allow yourself a hint of a whisper of a positive feeling, right up until you look in the mirror, and scream.

George W. Bush is just like that.

Everyone I know has had enough. Everyone I know is just about done. There is this threshold of happy deadened disgust, this point where the body simply resigns itself to the pain, a point where the disease, the poison has seeped so deeply into the bones that you just have to laugh and shrug it all off and go for a drink. Or 10.   more »

Having just returned to America after a year's absence, I'm pondering this question:

Why is it that the United States, which has not suffered a major terrorist attack at home for more than four years, thinks it's at war, while the United Kingdom, which was hit by a major terrorist attack just a year ago, does not?

The evocation of war is omnipresent in the US. Turn on Fox News and you find a war veteran recounting his experiences on Hill 805 in Vietnam. At one point he says: "I had the privilege of storming the machine gun".

The privilege. Walk into the Stanford University bookstore and you find a special display marked "Salute Our Heroes. 20% Off Select Patriotic Titles". Imagine that in your local Waterstone's.

On Tuesday, to mark the 230th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4 1776, President George Bush addressed troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Insisting that the US would "never accept anything less than complete victory" in Iraq, he informed them "you're winning this war".   more »

As we remember the London bombings, voices in Europe and America issue ominous warnings of an Islamic threat: the rise of Eurabia, Londonistan and an Islamic caliphate.

Recently, a prominent political commentator warned: "Even as Christianity seems to be dying in Europe, Islam is rising to shake the 21st century as it did so many previous centuries."

The Bin Ladens and Zarqawis of the world shape perceptions of Muslims. How do we prevent the militant rhetoric and actions of a minority from defining Islam and relations between Muslims and the west?

Our common peace and security depend more on mutual understanding than demonisation. We, Muslims and non-Muslims, have all been victims of global terrorism, in New York, Madrid, London, Bali and Amman.

And yet, five years after 9/11, the war on terrorism is seen by many Muslims as a war on Islam.

As Islamophobia and xenophobia grow, the critical distinction between religious extremism and mainstream Islam is increasingly blurred. How do we break out of this cycle of ignorance?   more »

Instructed by FIFA, the world's governing soccer body, to crack down on divers, divas, cheap-shot artists, shirt-pullers, time-wasters and telegenic crybabies, referees have responded, some might say overenthusiastically, by issuing a staggering total of 336 yellow cards (a caution that the player's next infraction will result in ejection) and 27 red cards ("your excellence is no longer required on the pitch, Mr. Rooney").

Depending on how you look at it, this issuing of cards either restored control to a noble sport that had been defiled by cheaters or ruined the World Cup.

Some would say that the fans have paid the price for this farcical parade of grown men wearing shorts and whistles running up to millionaires and waving cards in their faces.

But what about the referees themselves? Many were ordered to turn in their little black notebooks before the Cup was over, and two suffered the sports equivalent of deportation.

A Russian referee, Valentin Ivanov, left Germany in a self-created yellow and red blizzard after handing out a record number of cards in the tempestuous Netherlands-Portugal match.

An Englishman, Graham Poll, was sent home in disgrace after losing count of the yellow cards he had handed out to a Croatian defender.   more »

Long before the white man set foot on American soil, the American Indians, or rather the Native Americans, had been living in America. When the Europeans came here, there were probably about 10 million Indians north of present-day Mexico.

When the Europeans started to arrive in the 16th- and 17th-century they were met by Native Americans, and enthusiastically so.

The Natives regarded their white-complexioned visitors as something of a marvel, not only for their outlandish dress and beards and winged ships but even more for their wonderful technology - steel knives and swords, fire-belching arquebus and cannon, mirrors, hawkbells and earrings, copper and brass kettles, and so on.

However, conflicts eventually arose. As a starter, the arriving Europeans seemed attuned to another world, they appeared to be oblivious to the rhythms and spirit of nature.   more »

7 JULY

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