The Year of the Dragon is behind a spike in birth rates – and there's only one way to avoid the one-child policy and get better medical care. In Beijing, Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore reports on the rise of maternity tourism

Shares in Icap, the broking giant founded and run by Michael Spencer, soared yesterday after it said everything in the City is not quite as gloomy as people feared.

Sinclair Pharma and IS Pharma agreed to merge in April, with shares in the combined business (imaginatively christened Sinclair IS Pharma) starting trading in late May. Since then, the stock has been under pressure, easing as volatility in the wider market gathered pace. But the share price received a shot in the arm last week, after the company, which specialises in dermatological and wound care treatments, unveiled plans to buy the privately held US biotech company, Advanced Bio-Technologies (ABT).

It's tempting to seek large returns in volatile sectors – but be careful, warns Emma Dunkley

Amid the furore over the eurozone crisis and this week's make-or-break meeting in Brussels, another equally important summit is in danger of being forgotten.

Stephen Maguire, a former UK Championship winner, is hoping the game's latest exciting prospect, Judd Trump, will not let the trappings of his new-found success go to his head.

The Swedish car manufacturer Saab faced another escalation in its financial woes yesterday after a court-appointed administrator asked for the removal of its protection from bankruptcy.

An Australian businessman detained in southern China was sentenced yesterday to 13 years in jail for embezzlement and bribery.

Pandas are the WAGs of the animal kingdom: superficially attractive, but talentless

Growth, growth, growth... The regrettable lack of it and the imperative to encourage it were the guiding themes of the Chancellor's Autumn Statement, as they have been of practically anything anyone has said about the economy for years. Higher growth boosts national wealth and national morale; falling growth pushes countries into recession, which makes them feel, deservedly, very bad. So runs the consensus.

In the preface to his exhaustive biography of the Chinese statesman Deng Xiaoping, Ezra F Vogel recalls the moment the seed for the book was planted. Vogel, a professor at Harvard who has spent his career immersed in Japan and China, asked a seasoned journalist: "What would best help Americans understand coming developments in Asia" at the start of the 21 century? Without hesitation his friend replied: "Deng Xiaoping."

In 1997, David Brooks and William Kristol, then as now America's leading conservative columnists, wrote a seminal article in The Wall Street Journal calling for a politics of national greatness. "The left has always blamed America first," they wrote. "Conservatives once deplored this. They defended America. And when they sought to improve America, they did so by recalling Americans to their highest principles, and by calling them forward to a grand destiny. What is missing from today's conservatism is the appeal to American greatness."

Chinese industrial output grew at its weakest annual pace in a year in October and inflation fell sharply, raising expectations Beijing will do more to support economic growth by "fine tuning" policy.

A growing number of UK retailers have started in recent months to pay their Chinese suppliers in renminbi, which can help them to deliver cost savings of about five per cent, according to Barclays Capital.