Yilin Zhuo's younger daughter was the last to go into the ground. Before her had gone her sister, her younger brother and the baby, William. Too small for his own coffin, he lay nestled beside their mother.

Welcome to the next generation of sex toys. Take the Limon, a sleek lemon-shaped vibrator that could be sold at the gift shop of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The realisation was as surprising as it was momentous. Toledo, long known as Glass City, needed glass, and it could no longer be manufactured locally quickly enough.

In life, Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was Public Enemy No.1: a ruthless figure who devoted his career to bloodshed and mayhem against his own people as well as foreigners, whom Pakistani pundits occasionally accused of being a pawn of Indian, and even American, intelligence.

The warnings came, again and again.

For nearly a decade, scientists told city and state officials that New York faces certain peril - rising sea levels, more frequent flooding and extreme weather patterns. The alarm bells grew louder after Tropical Storm Irene last year, when the city shut down its subway system and water rushed into the Rockaways on Long Island and in Lower Manhattan.

Bo Guagua, the younger son of former Politburo member Bo Xilai, has made a rare public comment ahead of his father's corruption trial tomorrow, saying he had been unable to communicate with his parents for a year and a half and drawing attention to their "clandestine detention".