10 things..

Snippets harvested from the week's news, chopped, sliced and diced for your weekend convenience.
1. The Himalayas cover one-tenth of the Earth's surface.

2. Pandas are the only bears not to hibernate - their bamboo diet isn't sufficiently fattening.

3. Lord Levy, recruited by Tony Blair to raise money for the Labour party, made his own fortune managing Alvin Stardust, among others.

4. In a fight between a polar bear and a lion, the polar bear would win.

5. Aston Barrett, the bassist in Bob Marley's band, has 52 children.

6. Tests conducted on a rare Chinese frog with no external eardrums have shown it uses ultrasound to communicate.

7. The 18th Century horse Eclipse, the ancestor of an estimated 80% of modern thoroughbreds, had only averagely long legs.

8. Nearly a third of people aged 25 to 34 in the UK have a tattoo, a survey has found.

9. More of those with tattoos (17%) work in media and marketing than do in the Armed forces (9%).

10. Shortly after the InterCity 125 was introduced, the UK had the highest proportion of trains running at more than 100mph of any country.