Daughters

About 10% of married couples suffer from infertility - the inability to conceive a child naturally. Through the better part of the 20th century, physicians considered this a minor and perhaps irrelevant problem, one that contributed overall to society by keeping the birthrate down. British biologist Robert Edwards thought differently. He was among the first to fully appreciate the frustration and depression the condition engendered in its victims and the benefits that could arise from reversing it. Along the way, he met resistance from religious conservatives who insisted that life must begin only through intercourse, not artificially, and from fellow scientists who resented the fact that he spoke frequently with the media about both his research and the ethical implications.

Walt Disney's daughter said the nation lost a consummate professional and one of the loveliest people she has ever known with the death of Mouseketeer Annette Funicello. Funicello, the longtime Disney and beach movie star, passed away Monday at Mercy Southwest Hospital in Bakersfield at the age of 70.  She died peacefully from complications due to multiple sclerosis, a disease she battled for a quarter-century. "Everyone who knew Annette loved and respected her. She was one of the loveliest people I've ever known, and was always so kind to everyone.

MOSCOW - The Russian underworld calls him "Sportsman" for his physical strength and stamina. Police identify him as "High-Tech" because of his allegedly ingenious ways of stealing luxury cars. Now Igor Lovygin has captivated Russia for daring behavior this week apparently motivated by the accidental death of one of his young daughters, who drowned during a family vacation in Dubai. Lovygin, 36, the reputed leader of the country's most brazen car theft gang and a murder suspect wanted by authorities, accompanied his daughter's coffin to Russia, was arrested at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, and then escaped from officers Wednesday night after being transferred to St. Petersburg.

Would Ronald Reagan have supported gay marriage? His daughter, Patti Davis, thinks so. She told the New York Times in an interview that, growing up in California her family had close relationships with and accepted gay couples. “I grew up in this era where your parents' friends were all called aunt and uncle,” Davis told the paper. “And then I had an aunt and an aunt. We saw them on holidays and other times.” She added, “We never talked about it, but I just understood that they were a couple.” According to the New York Times: Davis "offered several reasons her father, who would have been 102 this year, would have bucked his party on the issue: his distaste for government intrusion into private lives, his Hollywood acting career and close friendship with a lesbian couple who once cared for Ms. Davis and her younger brother Ron while their parents were on a Hawaiian vacation - and slept in the Reagans' king-size bed. " She also said that when Reagan once saw Rock Hudson kill a woman on screen, he told her the closeted gay star “would rather be kissing a man.” Davis' comments come as the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding the fate of Proposition 8, California's ban on gay marriage.

A mother charged with murder in the drownings of her two young girls in the bathtub of their South Los Angeles home committed suicide while in jail, an L.A. County sheriff's spokesman confirmed. The death of Lorna Valle, 33, was reported Feb. 23 at the Lynwood jail but was not made public by sheriff's officials. Los Angeles County coroner's officials said Valle, who was awaiting trial, died of asphyxiation after placing a bag over her head. Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said Valle died at the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood but denied the department had anything to hide, noting jail officials do not routinely release identities of those who commit suicide while in custody.

SUNNYVALE, Texas - Police helicopters hovered overhead, officers mingled with the crowd and snipers positioned themselves on the roof of the church where mourners gathered Thursday to honor a local district attorney who was gunned down with his wife last Saturday. More than 2,000 people filled Sunnyvale First Baptist Church for the memorial honoring Kaufman County Dist. Atty. Mike McLelland, 63, and his wife, Cynthia, 65. No one has been arrested in connection with the slayings.

The mother of a Northridge girl who was abducted in the middle of the night was awakened by a sound just before she discovered her daughter was gone, police said. After checking on her daughter at 1 a.m. Wednesday, the mother awoke again around 3:40 a.m. to a noise. When she got up to check on her daughter, she noticed the 10-year-old girl's door was ajar. When she peered inside her daughter's bedroom, it was empty. "It's every parent's nightmare,” said LAPD Capt. Kris Pitcher.

In "Bob's New Suit," a family deals with a series of intersecting dramas. Bob and Jenny (Hunter S. Bodine and Hayley DuMond) decide to get married just as Bob's sister Stephanie (Shay Astar) announces she is transitioning from female to male and will now go by Steve. Their parents, Polly and Buster (Suzi Bodine and John Bennett Perry), struggle to take it all in as Buster deals with escalating health issues. Though Alan Howard, a former studio executive and film critic in his debut as a writer-director, captures the way in which personal and family dramas intersect so there is not one episode or incident that prevails in making life chaotic, he also can't stop himself from piling problems one on top of another like a late-night sandwich gone out of control.

REWARI, India - Vijendera Kumar has been sentenced to work and live in a cow shed for six months, feeding and bathing the animals and shoveling their dung 10 hours a day, seven days a week, after eloping at 17 with his girlfriend. That is in addition to a year the laborer spent in jail. "They didn't even investigate my case," Kumar said, surrounded by 300 lumbering beasts. "Punishing young people for having consensual sex is unfair and backwards. " Among the most controversial provisions of anti-rape legislation passed Thursday in India's Parliament - in hurried response to public anger over the fatal mid-December gang rape of a 23-year old physiotherapy student - was a provision setting the age of sexual consent at 18. But even before the law passed, Indian law was flexible enough, as Kumar learned, to make consensual sex among teenagers risky, a paradox in a society where rape has often gone unpunished and marriages are still arranged among the young.

Sybil Christopher, who died last week in New York at 83, was a noted theater producer and the founder of Arthur, a Manhattan hot spot that attracted a ritzy celebrity clientele during the 1960s. Even if she hadn't become famous as the first wife, and later, ex-wife, of actor Richard Burton, Christopher would still have occupied an important seat in New York high society and culture. "She was very hands on -- as hands on a mother as she was a producer. " said Kate Burton, her eldest daughter.