LONDON - The ancient quest of fashionable women to stave off the effects of age has always left them open to the claims of swindlers. The latest edition of the snake oil chronicles, according to the UK's Daily Mail, has a more "scientific" cachet and involves injecting stem cells gleaned from aborted babies as well as umbilical cord blood directly into the skin.

Scores of British women are opting for a procedure that stem cell experts are condemning as charlatanry. A private British clinic makes arrangements for well-to-do English women to travel to Rotterdam in the Netherlands for the treatment, which is as yet illegal in the UK. Treatment centres can be found online, the Mail reveals, offering "aesthetic stem cell treatments" for between £150 and £20,000.

The Daily Mail, however, only mentions the use of umbilical cord stem cells in these treatments and describes this as "barbaric," while the paper's editorial policy is in full support of abortion and embryonic stem cell research. The Mail conflates the debate on stem cells calling all stem cell research "controversial," including ethically unproblematic and medically successful umbilical cord stem cell treatments.

Under the headline, "A Barbaric Kind of Beauty," The Mail's Andrea Thompson writes, "In America, President Bush has denounced stem-cell therapy even for medical purposes as 'godless', vetoing any public funding." Bush, however, along with the pro-life community, has condemned only that stem cell research that results in the death of human beings at the embryonic stage of life.

While the Daily Mail misrepresents the nature of the stem cell debate, a US group has found the real barbarism. Concerned Women for America has discovered that the practice of abortion being used to provide tissue for beauty treatments in such exclusive clinics is widespread.

Concerned Women for America says that poor women are being paid up to $200 dollars to have their unborn children killed between 8 and 12 weeks gestation when the foetuses are "harvested" for their stem cells, which are then sold to exclusive cosmetic clinics.

Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, Senior Fellow of CWA's Beverly LaHaye Institute, said "It is hard to believe that such atrocities are going on today. These exclusive and exorbitant treatments are available in such varied locales as Barbados, Moscow, Dominican Republic and in Rotterdam."

"Not only is the origin of the foetuses immoral and inhumane; there are medical problems and complications associated with the injections. This savage and repulsive 'brave new world' of human sacrifices in the quest for eternal youth is a prime example of the end results when all moral boundaries are destroyed," Crouse continued.

Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh of the U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey also fined Yahor Zalatarou, 27, of Minsk, Belarus, president of Regpay Co. Ltd., and Aliaksandr Boika, 30, also of Minsk, Regpay's technical administrator, $25,000 each. Authorities have seized $1.15 million from the operation, AP reports.

The day before jury selection was to start in 2005, Zalatarou pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport and ship, by way of computer, images of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct; Boika pleaded guilty to conspiracy to advertise child pornography. Both men also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money-laundering.

Regpay ran an Internet porn business that had thousands of paid memberships to dozens of Web sites featuring children. Along with operating several Web sites, the company earned millions of dollars processing credit-card fees for more than 50 other Web sites. The Regpay sites were operated from Minsk and hosted by Internet service providers in the United States and abroad.

Screeching brakes, skidding cars and angry drivers were captured on film by the four, who fled before passengers or police could catch them.

They chose a busy roundabout in the eastern coastal city on the road to La Nucia as their preferred hunting ground and, according to local police, risked their own lives to provoke sudden reactions. Three of them took it in turns to jump out at drivers while a fourth hid in some bushes and filmed. Police said the men, all 18, caused at least two accidents before being caught.

The antics normally took place early in the morning, as the Frenchmen indulged their exuberance after a night of drinking, police said. "They risked their physical integrity, as well as that of the drivers and traffic in this busy road," a spokesman told the local Las Provincias newspaper. Nobody was hurt in the accidents.

Spain has recently seen the arrival of happy slapping and other versions of crimes in which the perpetrators record what they are doing. The country, where more than 100 forest fires were burning yesterday, has also seen cases of people starting fires and filming the results.