According to a headline on CNN.com, “Scientists grow mini brains from stem cells.” The article goes on to say, “They’re not actually functioning brains but the parts are there,” which is why the researchers have named the first one Miley.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, having been sentenced to 35 years in prison, issued a statement saying, “I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible.” He went on to ask that, “starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun.” In order to dispel any confusion, Chelsea Clinton has asked that from now on she be referred to as Bradley.

The Catholic wire service Zenit  says Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI didn’t retire from the papacy because he was getting old and weak as he originally said, but rather because “God told me to.” Probably good that he took the advice if he’s getting messages like that, though one has to wonder what he would have done had god told him to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

Two hundred thirty-five million Mexican children who returned to school on Monday learned an important lesson—you can’t believe everything you read. It turns out that 235 million of the elementary school textbooks provided by the government’s Education Department were riddled with at least 117 errors, including misspellings, grammar and punctuation mistakes, and a map that put the popular tourist city of Tulum in the wrong state. “We’ve learned our lesson,” one of the book’s editors said. “How were we to know that using Google Translate on an American textbook wouldn’t work?”