Join Uri Geller, the world's most celebrated paranormalist, as he counts down to the Year 2000 - proving that the world is getting weirder every day.

Cloning pushes back the boundaries of science and probably decency; forget your ancestors at your peril and can we set up web-sites in the solar system? It's all in this week's wacky countdown to the 21st century.

Day 351 - Friday, January 15

An animal cloning lab has created a half-man, half-cow embryo. Advanced Cell Technology, linked to the University of Massachusetts, fused a man's skin cell with a bovine egg and allowed it to live for several days. A second team in Oregon has created sheep, pig, rat and monkey hybrids of cow, with one pregnancy surviving for 30 days. The aim is to create embryos for tissues in transplant operations.

Day 350 - Saturday, January 16

If we forget our ancestors, we are doomed to repeat their mistakes - and even suffer their deaths, claims Professor Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger. The US psychotherapist believes behaviour patterns haunt families like ghosts, and points to the death of John F Kennedy as evidence. The President died on November 22, 1963, after ignoring advice to keep his limousine's bullet-proof roof down. Kennedy's great-grandfather Patrick also died in reckless circumstances, in 1858 - on November 22.

Day 349 - Sunday, January 17

The British Museum is apparently taking end-of-the-world Millennium warnings very seriously. It is planning an exhibition called The Apocalypse And The Shape Of Things To Come, examining art derived from the Revelation of St John the Divine, the New Testament's last book. As well as paintings and sculptures, Rudolph Valentino's great silent movie The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse will feature.

Day 348 - Monday, January 18

Internet guru Vinton Cerf, senior vice president at telecommunications giant MCI WorldCom, is struggling to solve a planet-sized problem - how to set up web-links to other places in the solar system. Cerf, who predicts 300 million people will be online by 2000, says the chief problem about putting computers on Mars is not the lack of oxygen or the extreme cold - it's the distance. At light-speed, Martian signals will take up to 24 minutes to reach earth.

Day 347 - Tuesday, January 19

Thai cloners plan to recreate the original white elephant - a magnificent beast ridden in state by P'ra Nang Klao, King of Siam between 1824 and 1851. Fragments of white skin have been preserved in alcohol, and Chisanu Ti-yacharoensri of Mahidol University in Bangkok hopes to persuade Thailand's present ruler, Bhumibol Adulyadej, to sanction the use of its DNA.

Day 346 - Wednesday, January 20

The Bible is a more accurate guide to the future than the opinions of pollsters and pundits, Americans believe. USA Today claimed 49 per cent of people put their faith in prophecies from scripture, with 22 per cent believing almanacs, 21 per cent accepting horoscopes, 16 per cent admitting to faith in psychics, and only ten per cent giving credence to opinion polls. The ouija board scored even worse - only three per cent thought its mysterious murmurings had any meaning.

Day 345 - Thursday, January 21

Booker Prize-winning novelist Ben Okri has published a 50-page poem called Mental Fight to inject some positive thinking into the 21st century. "This is an extraordinary time to be alive," says the 39-year-old Nigerian. "We do need a different music from TS Eliot's The Waste Land which was inclined to drag the spirit down. "This is our calendrical change, so it is a good time to start to belt out a joyful song."

Uri Geller's novel Ella is published by Headline Feature at £5.99, his Little Book Of MindPower by Robson Books at £2.50, and Jonathan Margolis's Uri Geller, Magician or Mystic? by Orion Books at £17.99

Visit Uri Geller's Interactive Psychic City: www.urigeller.com or email him at urigeller@compuserve.com 08/01/99

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.