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India plans to end commercial surrogacy

India will stop the lucrative business of women renting their wombs as surrogate mothers. A doctor who runs a fertility clinic tells us why the government is banning the service.

The days of India being known as the world's hub for surrogacy may soon be over, after the government unveiled planned legislation aimed at limiting the business. Commercial surrogacy often raises strong emotions and in India childless people, often foreigners, have been paying women to carry a fertilised human egg for them to full term and birth. It is a billion dollar business which is seen as a way out of poverty. Dr Archana Dhawan Bajaj, who runs a fertility clinic in Delhi, tells us why the government plans to ban it.

Facebook, Google and Twitter are consciously failing to tackle the recruitment of terrorists via their websites, that is according to British politicians. The MPs claim the giants of the internet should be putting staff in police operation centres to remove dangerous material quickly. We ask Doctor Erin Marie Saltman, an expert in counter extremism at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, if the politicians are right.

The current campaign for the next President of the United States is providing good entertainment for political experts, as the two main candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump keep trading insults. However according to veteran economist Irwin Stelzer, "nobody is talking about how we get the economy moving again." We hear more of his thoughts on how economic issues are being discussed.

What was once a fast, cheap snack of sometimes questionable quality, the hamburger, has undergone a change of image. It is now on the menus of gourmet restaurants and in the UK a day of celebration has been set up in its honour - today marks the fourth year of National Burger Day. Elizabeth Hotson takes to the streets of London to find out if the trend can continue, or have we reached market saturation, are we at peak burger?

(Picture:The Surrogacy Centre India clinic in New Delhi. Copyright AFP/Getty Images.)

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27 minutes

Last on

Thu 25 Aug 2016 18:32GMT

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  • Thu 25 Aug 2016 18:32GMT