“Science is an area of great importance to licence fee payers, which provokes strong reaction and covers some of the most sensitive editorial issues the BBC faces. Heated debate in recent years around topics like climate change, GM crops and the MMR vaccine reflects this, and BBC reporting has to steer a course through these controversial issues while remaining impartial.”

Richard Tait, Chair of the BBC Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee the governing body of the UK’s public sector broadcaster, says the ”https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/january/science_impartiality.shtml">Trust will review the coverage of science by the organisation.

“The case was not allowed to be released to the public. The three executives will be prosecuted in a week for producing and selling fake or substandard products.”

Shen Weiping, of the Fengxian procuratorate, comments after suggestions that quality inspectors allowed details of melamine contamination in milk to be covered up for a year in China (Xinhua).

“It came as a surprise when the first geoglyphs [geometric earthworks] in the floodplain were discovered in 2006, while the third author was browsing Google Earth satellite imagery. … We present substantial evidence for a family of geometric earthworks that extend over a vast region drained by tributaries of the upper Pur´us River, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon.”

A new “complex society” in western Amazonia has been reported in the journal Antiquity.

“I am not especially interested in the digits of pi.”

Fabrice Bellard says he has computed the constant to more digits than ever before but the number itself does not really interest him (BBC).