The pop singer Michael Jackson (left) became a father yesterday when his wife Debbie Rowe gave birth to a boy, a Los Angeles television station reported. Mother and child were said to be doing well.

The Department of Health warned last night that it may take legal action to stop an American "rent-a womb" baby broker recruiting childless couples in the United Kingdom.

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This was not, it was clear, California's answer to the break-up of the Soviet Union. The dozen people gathered on the steps of a boarded- up municipal building in the San Fernando Valley were law-abiding businessmen and homeowners who cleared their throats before they spoke.

In the end it wasn't the inter-galactic blow-out live on the Internet, the first ever "visible, interactive suicide" he once said he wanted, complete with an encore centuries down the line if science could find a cure for death. Timothy Leary, the old prince of psychedelia, Messiah of a certain 1960s madness, yesterday departed from the world he had variously mocked, mesmerised, and scandalised in the manner most people would choose. In his bed, in his sleep, in the company of close friends.

A California jury yesterday found Lyle and Erik Menendez guilty of first- degree murder in the brutal shootings of their mother and father nearly seven years ago.

SHOWBUSINESS lost one of its most enduring stars yesterday with the death of comedian George Burns, just a few weeks after his 100th birthday.

SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK 'N' ROLL It used to seen as the be-all and end-all of sex. Now a generation of 'tactical virgins' is showing there's more than one way to skin a cat. By Cora Mann

TIM CORNWELL

Teen anguish based on opposition to adults has been replaced by a celebration of teenage emancipation

Macaulay Culkin was once the biggest child star since Shirley Temple. After a string of box office flops his career is in tatters, at the age of 15. The only show he is likely to star in resumes today: his parents' acrimonious custody battle. Daniel Jeffreys reports

KATIE and Eilish Holton were born joined from shoulder to hip, with four arms and two shared legs. Each had her own heart and spinal column but shared one pelvis, one large bowel, one bladder and one kidney. Soon after surgeons separated them in 1992, at the age of three, Katie died of heart failure - it transpired that she had a weak heart and the operation had effectively saved Eilish.

DOORSTEP AEROBICS: If you're consumed with guilt by over-indulgence of home-delivered pizza, why not dial-a-gym? American companies like Fitness To Go in Alabama and Fitness On The Move in Florida are now being aped over here. Joanna Berry at the National Register of Personal Trainers says some of her members now make house calls; but don't expect vanloads of equipment - "some might haul exercise bikes and weights around, but you can get equally good results with a couple of rolling pins". The NRPT can put you in touch with your nearest low-tech mobile trainer if you call 0181-944 6688.

Edward Helmore in Los Angeles looks at the next legal blockbuster to grip the US