SEVEN DAYS

A glance at the week that was

Kid bid

What had you done with your life by the time you left your teens? It's likely that you hadn't sold your company for a few million euro , as have Limerick brothers Patrick and John Collison. Their firm, Auctomatic, provides software that allows heavy users of eBay to manage their inventory more efficiently, and it was bought - after a bidding war - by a Canadian company. The brothers, with their two British partners Harjeet and Kulveer Taggar, sold Auctomatic for a price believed to be in excess of €3.2 million.

Tom mom

Thomas Beatie - a 34-year-old from Oregon who was born Tracy Lagondino - is five months pregnant . He had had gender realignment surgery, but kept his female reproductive organs. Because his wife has had a hysterectomy, it was up to him to fulfil their wish to start a family.

"Friends and family have been unsupportive; most of Nancy's family doesn't even know I'm transgender," admitted Beatie. "Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire but a human desire."

We now know

• A Finnish tourist faces jail after breaking off the ear of an Easter Island statue to bring home as a souvenir

• Lidl employed private investigators to "spy" on German staff between 2006 and 2007, compiling dossiers on their private lives, conversations, finances and toilet habits , according to Stern magazine

• The Japanese government has introduced mandatory "fat checks" in an effort, it says, to curb obesity

The numbers

€60m The cost per kilometre of Luas extension to Dublin's Docklands

400 The number of people trapped on the London Eye for over an hour this week. They had to break open the emergency packs

4,000 The number of US troops killed in Iraq, as of Monday

"I'm portrayed as someone devilish, and as if there's no goodness in me "

Poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh speaks about the controversy over his visits to Nepal.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times