News

We Are Family: Lavi Aron, left, and Omer Shatzky's kids were the products of a multinational operation orchestrated by Switzerland-based Elite IVF. | Photograph by J. Carrier

Photograph by Steve Bronstein

Modern fertility technology has made parenthood a possibility for thousands more people, but it has also created a lucrative -- and ethically questionable -- global trade in human genetic material.

Krinos Trokoudes knows this much about women: "If you pay something," he says with a smile, "you get lots of girls." Coming from a silver-haired man in a white lab coat, the remark sounds a little unseemly, but he does not mean it the way you may think.

Trokoudes is an embryologist. His business is harvesting human eggs, and every year, hundreds of women are impregnated at his Pedeios IVF Treatment Centre in the Cypriot capital, Nicosia. In 1992, he made the Guinness Book of World Records after a 49-year-54-day-old...

This week on "American Idol", 96 people were slimmed down to 71 in the second Hollywood round. These singer wannabes were grouped in three, four or five and they had to harmonize as well as choreograph a move. Elimination however, is based on individual performance.

First one to come up on stage was Faith, consisting of Charity Vance, Michelle Delamour, and Nicole Rodriguez. They sang Beyonce Knowles' "Irreplaceable" and they all went through. Next was Team Awesome which grouped Michael Lynche, Tim Urban, Michael Castro and Seth Rollins. Unlike Faith, this lots got split into half with Michael and Tim advancing.

Neapolitan got into trouble but not from the judges. They (Liz Rooney, Thaddeus Johnson and Jessica Cunningham and another girl) double crossed another group Destiny's Wild by ripping off the idea of doing an a capella of Lady GaGa's "Bad Romance". Despite it all, all four of them made it.