Swallow surprise

of Virginia's governor Tim Kaine to sign a bill banning the use of certain state funds for embryonic stem cell research. This move has an ironic twist as Obama nominated Kaine as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a position he will take on full time when his term as governor expires next January. In Germany, production of and research with new stem cell lines are still off limits, but in April 2008 the Bundestag moved the time limit forward to May 1 2007, so all stem cell lines created before that date can be imported and used for research. Focusing its efforts on a slightly less controversial part of the bioethics field, the Bundestag recently passed a new law regulating the use of genetic diagnostics. Jochen Graw, a board member of Germany's Society for Genetics (GfG) was less than impressed by the draft legislation, complaining that it introduced unnecessary complications on one side, while failing to grasp the distinction between genotype and phenotype on the other. A new member in the stem cell club, Brazil, is now beginning to reap the rewards of permissive legislation introduced in 2005 against strong opposition from the Catholic church. Following last year's victory in the Supreme Federal Court, which upheld the legislation, the Brazilian government has now launched a major funding initiative for stem cell research. First successes include a home-grown new stem cell line, and the development of a new method of growing human ES cells in bioreactors. Michael Gross is a science writer based at Oxford. He can be contacted via his web page at www.michaelgross.co.uk Britain was quite slow to take up the new method of ringing birds to glean information about their migrations. the first person systematically to ring birds in 1899. He ringed 165 young starlings with numbered and addressed rings hoping that some of the birds would be found and the rings returned with information about when and where the birds had travelled. The experiment was a success and the next year the first results were published. The method attracted much attention abroad and in the following years many countries started to ring birds and establish ringing centres. But it was not until 1909 that a ringing scheme in Britain was established. Originally there were two schemes, one run by the journal British Birds, instigated by the editor, Harry Forbes Witherby, and one at Aberdeen University, started …