* WORLD'S MOST-PREMATURE BABY ALLOWED HOME – Miami – A premature baby that doctors say spent less time in the womb than any other surviving infant is scheduled for release from a South Florida hospital yesterday.

Amillia Sonja Taylor was just 24.13cm long and weighed less than 284 grams when she was born on October 24. She was delivered after just under 22 weeks of pregnancy; full-term births come after 37 to 40 weeks.

Neonatologists who cared for Amillia say she is the first baby known to survive after a gestation period of fewer than 23 weeks. "We weren't too optimistic," Dr William Smalling said on Monday. "But she proved us all wrong."

The baby has experienced respiratory problems, a very mild brain haemorrhage and some digestive problems, but none of the health concerns are expected to pose long-term problems, her doctors said.

"We can deal with lungs and things like that but, of course, the brain is the most important," Dr Paul Fassbach, who has cared for Amillia since her second day, said over the phone on Monday. "But her prognosis is excellent."

Amillia is the first child for Eddie and Sonja Taylor of Homestead. She was conceived by in vitro fertilisation, which made it possible to pinpoint her exact time in the womb, and was delivered by Caesarean section.

* ANGLICANS SPAR WITH U.S. CHURCH ON GAY MARRIAGE - The Anglican Communion gave the U.S. Episcopal Church a September deadline yesterday to stop blessing same-sex unions, but gave no clear indication of what action it would then take.

Anglican church leaders are meeting in Tanzania to reconcile conservative and liberal views on homosexuality, exacerbated by the Episcopal Church's consecration of openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson in 2003. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. wing of Anglicanism.

In a statement issued in the final hour of the tense meeting, the Anglican Communion gave the U.S. church the Sept. 30 deadline to meet the request first issued in 2004.

"If the reassurances requested of the House of Bishops cannot in good conscience be given, the relationship between the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as a whole remains damaged at best, and this has consequences for the full participation of the church in the life of the communion," the statement said.

The spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, said it offered "an interim solution that certainly falls very short of resolving all the disputes."

Williams has no power to force a solution in the communion, a loose federation of 38 self-governing churches, which has traditionally run on consensus.

However, he said the U.S. church might not be invited to the 2008 Lambeth Conference – a once-in-a-decade meeting of all Anglican bishops – if it did not comply.

"Either they are part of mainstream Anglicanism or they are not," said Martyn Minns, a prominent U.S. cleric who has aligned with the conservative Anglican church in Nigeria.

Earlier, a group of senior Anglican bishops released a draft covenant that would allow the communion to sever ties with churches that stepped out of line.

But officials expect it to take years for the draft to be finalized.

The consecration of Robinson sparked uproar among traditionalists particularly in Africa, home to more than half the world's Anglicans.

* “LOST TOMB OF JESUS” TRIES TO TURN “FICTION INTO BELIEVABILITY” - Archaeologists and clergymen in the Holy Land derided claims in a new documentary produced by the Oscar-winning director James Cameron that contradict major Christian tenets.

The Lost Tomb of Christ, which the Discovery Channel will run on March 4, argues that 10 ancient ossuaries small caskets used to store bones discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family, according to a press release issued by the Discovery Channel.

One of the caskets even bears the title, "Judah, son of Jesus," hinting that Jesus may have had a son. And the very fact that Jesus had an ossuary would contradict the Christian belief that he was resurrected and ascended to heaven.

Most Christians believe Jesus' body spent three days at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem's Old City. The burial site identified in Cameron's documentary is in a southern Jerusalem neighborhood nowhere near the church.

In 1996, when the British Broadcasting Corporation aired a short documentary on the same subject, archaeologists challenged the claims. Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, said the idea fails to hold up by archaeological standards but makes for profitable television.

"They just want to get money for it," Kloner said.

The claims have raised the ire of Christian leaders in the Holy Land.

"The historical, religious and archaeological evidence show that the place where Christ was buried is the Church of the Resurrection," said Attallah Hana, a Greek Orthodox clergyman in Jerusalem. The documentary, he said, "contradicts the religious principles and the historic and spiritual principles that we hold tightly to."

Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was interviewed in the documentary, said the film's hypothesis holds little weight.

"I don't think that Christians are going to buy into this," Pfann said. "But skeptics, in general, would like to see something that pokes holes into the story that so many people hold dear."

Pfann is even unsure that the name "Jesus" on the caskets was read correctly. He thinks it's more likely the name "Hanun."

Kloner also said the filmmakers' assertions are false.

"It was an ordinary middle-class Jerusalem burial cave," Kloner said. "The names on the caskets are the most common names found among Jews at the time."

Archaeologists also balk at the filmmaker's claim that the James ossuary the center of a famous antiquities fraud in Israel might have originated from the same cave. In 2005, Israel charged five suspects with forgery in connection with the infamous bone box.

"I don't think the James ossuary came from the same cave," said Dan Bahat, an archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University. "If it were found there, the man who made the forgery would have taken something better. He would have taken Jesus."

Although the documentary makers claim to have found the tomb of Jesus, the BBC beat them to the punch by 11 years.

* CALIFORNIA PLAN WOULD CRIMINALIZE SPANKING (Parents who use a careful swat classed the same as child abusers) - A leading state lawmaker in California has introduced a proposal that would classify parents who place a careful swat on the bottom of their little one, enthralled in the pursuit of excitement during the "terrible twos," the same as a child abuse felon who beats a baby with an electrical cord.

Calling it "a bill to clarify and strengthen California law protecting children, especially infants and toddlers," the sponsor, Assemblywoman Sally Lieber said "good parents have no reason for concern as a result of this legislation…"

Officials with the pro-family Campaign for Children and Families, however, said that may be an assumption by Lieber, a Democrat from Mountain View, but it won't be fact if AB755 becomes law.

It would make a criminal of any mother or father who would use a switch to give their little one a paddling because of their behavior, CCF officials said.

Randy Thomasson, the president of the CCF, a California-based pro-family group, said it would just be a matter of time before moms and dads would be arrested and cuffed for trying to discipline a youngster.

"We are calling upon California voters to rise up and demand that the government keep its big nose out of the family home," he said. "Lawmakers should focus on protecting children from sexual predators and real abusers, instead of targeting good, loving parents who implement healthy, occasional spanking as part of their children's upbringing.