The appointment of Luke Johnson as the new chairman of Channel 4 q@zt$%3 ... sorry, something's gone wrong with the computer, it keeps flashing up a message saying "System error - logic malfunction". Must be one of those computer viruses that are going around. Anyway, the appointment of L*** J****** as chairman of Channel 4 brings to mind the words of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands: "I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can understand it."
· Some useful news from Denmark, where a biotech company has put genetic engineering to work for something useful, other than filling the coffers of the likes of Monsanto. Aresa Biodetection of Copenhagen has designed a special flower to detect landmines, using genetically modified Thale cress weed that changes colour when the plant's roots come into contact with the nitrogen-dioxide given out by buried explosives. The rapidly growing plants take three to six weeks to grow, with its flowers turning red whenever it is growing close to a mine. Given the millions of landmines scattered over the world's trouble spots, in places such as Cambodia, Angola and Bosnia, the plant could enable the rapid and cheap identification of minefields. According to the Red Cross, 26,000 people are killed or injured by mines every year. The genetically modified plant is also designed to be infertile, to stop the weed spreading.
· With the Hutton business grabbing the headlines, how unfortunate that our old friend Michael O'Leary chose to move forward by one week the announcement of Ryanair's latest results to yesterday. And it was doubly unfortunate the results coincided with the announcement of Ryanair's first-ever profits warning, and a 25% fall in the company's share price at one point in the day.
· The House of Lords, meanwhile, saw an unusual display of glasnost over the financial state of the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, owner of Thorp and the Sellafield Mox plant, known as SMP. In the Lords last week, the government minister Lord Davies of Oldham casually announced in the course of a debate on the new energy bill: "We consider a great deal of the activity of the NDA, particularly at Thorp and SMP, to be loss-making." It makes a change to get the unvarnished truth.
· A challenger to the Christchurch Press, mentioned here yesterday as potentially the world's dullest newspaper, comes from the Coshocton Tribune in Ohio, which recently carried an article with the eye-grabbing heading: "Popularity of paper clips continue [sic] through the years". The piece quotes the office manager of the Coshocton Tribune - saying: "The office uses paper clips everyday" - before taking a stroll through the history of the paper clip (invented 1867). But the highpoint of the article is the paragraph beginning: "Paper clips are not all glory."
