Free Republic

A woman has sparked controversy by revealing she is trying for her ninth surrogate baby. Carole Horlock, 36, who has two children of her own, has given birth to eight surrogate children. Now she has signed a £15,000 expenses deal to produce a child for a couple living in the Home Counties. The announcement comes just 12 weeks after she gave away her eighth surrogate baby, and she says she'll "retire" only after producing her tenth. Miss Horlock, a launderette manager from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, said: "People call me rent-a-womb, which is unkind. But I do what I do for the...

Chinese dig unearths secrets of general with nine tombsJohn Gittings Tuesday January 14, 2003The GuardianThe legend of a Chinese general who had nine tombs - so that no one would know which one he was buried in - has come alive at an archaeological site in central China. The general's mausoleum was found last year at Zaoyang, in Hubei province, where a line of mounds had long been known by locals as the "ridge of nine". Details have now been published about the opening a fortnight ago of the elaborate coffin in which he was buried at least 2,300...

General Ne Win, the former president of Burma (now Myanmar), who died yesterday aged 91, ruled his country with an iron fist for 26 years, dragging it into poverty-stricken isolation.Ne Win, who seized power in a coup in 1962, was xenophobic, capricious, superstitious and fascinated by the occult “science” of numerology. Nine was his lucky number: important events were staged on dates whose numbers, when added together, made nine; and in 1987, after deciding that all banknotes should be divisible by nine, he introduced the 45-kyat and 90-kyat notes. The result was that Burmese who had hoarded 100-kyat notes lost...