Joseph Needham initiated and wrote much of one of the most impressive scholarly achievements of modern times: the multi-volume Science and Civilisation in China. Earlier, he shone as a biochemist, and helped set up Unesco. He died in 1995, aged 94. But until now, no biography has appeared.

A pensioner broke her neck after falling off her seat on a bus as it turned a corner, police said today.

Leading independent schools are boycotting A-level and GCSE examination league tables this year, claiming that they have become increasingly "meaningless".

The race was devised to bring the world to Chicago, but this time it worked out the other way round. For the 26th running of the Arlington Million, an epic of pragmatism, politics and pride, showed that there is a little bit of this city in everyone.

A new rival to the GCSE exam designed along the lines of the traditional O-level may soon win backing from exam watchdogs and be taken up by hundreds of state schools.

Down by the saddling boxes here, a pink magnolia sapling is twitching reluctantly into bloom, a gash of colour in the damp, grey tableau. Other trees retain the bare, stricken aspect of midwinter. And, judging by events on the track yesterday, different horses are likewise awakening at a different rate as spring creeps across these islands.

A close friend of the Education Diary has just joined the website Friends Reunited – Facebook for old fogies – and was interested to note what his old school chums were up to. Between the ages of 11 and 16, our friend attended a comprehensive school which, being in close competition with the local grammar school, was effectively a secondary modern. Having done well in his GCSEs, he won a place at said grammar school to study for his A-levels. Surfing on the social-networking website, he has noticed that his friends from the comp entered steady careers in quantity surveying and the like, and had either taken early retirement or been made redundant. His more illustrious grammar-school cronies, meanwhile, had been out and seen the world, and then returned to become something big in the City, or prominent lawyers. This binary divide was the product of the education system of 40 years ago. Would it be any different today? Plus ça change, we say.

A bid by a giant insurance company to build a controversial "ecotown" in unspoilt Hampshire countryside has failed.

Dear Virginia, When our son was six years old, we adopted a girl of three. They became a loving brother and sister, and now she is a single mum with a son of 13. But our son has married a girl who won't accept our daughter as family and won't let our grandson call her 'auntie'. My son reluctantly supports his wife (they are childless). How can we maintain a relationship with our son and his wife on this basis? Yours sincerely, Freda

There has been something of a balance of anguish for Northern Ireland politicians of late, as both republicans and loyalists have been bringing themselves to the point of making moves which are groundbreaking and risky. Movement has been so slow for the past year that it has at times resembled complete logjam. So many deadlines have come and gone, so many meetings held with no visible result, that the peace process has seemed devoid of momentum.