The traditional street-corner cry of 'Staaan-D'd' is being silenced. Matthew Bell reports

Producer/turntablist Nickodemus brings the world to his New York studio on this follow-up to the wellreceived Endangered Species, mixing up a series of spicy pan-cultural crossovers in which East sidles up to West and gives it a playful pinch on the posterior, before both head south to shake a tail with their hedonist Latin cousins.

The former Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein insists there is too much at stake in football to hold back on the introduction of technology and has said that referees are a "endangered species". Costly and questionable refereeing decisions have prompted hot debate on the issue over recent years, most prominently on whether technology could be used to decide whether a ball has crossed the goal-line.

In a rare glimmer of good news for the housing market, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said yesterday that it detected "tentative signs that housing activity may be nearing a floor", but also warned that the Government's "confused messages" on stamp duty "risks damaging any returning confidence and may discourage mobility".

Efforts to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale from being killed by ships are being blocked by Vice President Dick Cheney according to leaked documents.

AS EVER,women's health is being undervalued ("Midwives: an endangered species?", 1 August). Midwives, responsible for bringing new life into the world, are paid pounds 15,000 a year to be on call 24 hours a day for a physically and emotionally demanding job. As a result, the profession is in crisis. I saw my first midwife at the Royal Free twice before she left to have her own baby. The second one (once I had moved to Lambeth) I saw three times before she quit and moved home to Edinburgh to look for different work. A fortnight ago there was a stand-in at the Lambeth Walk surgery, taken off the ward at St Thomas's Hospital. This week I have seen a freelance midwife (better-paid) who is leaving the profession to train as a solicitor, where her starting salary as a trainee will be the same as her present one after five years working for the NHS.

AS AN Englishman at Chelsea, Dennis Wise may be an endangered species, but Saturday's testimonial against Bologna, which brought him around pounds 500,000, should compensate.

THE BALD eagle, the national emblem of the United States, has escaped extinction and will be removed from the list of endangered species, the United States government said yesterday.

Last week saw a rare conjunction. Two landmark series running at the same time: The Life of Birds (BBC1, Wednesdays) and Earth Story (BBC2, Sundays). Landmarks are series that claim direct descent from Lord Clark's Civilisation and Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, the twins who founded factual television. Their common format involves a single eminent presenter developing an argument over a number of weeks. The aim is identifiably lofty: to familiarise the viewer with one or other of the structural elements of the edifice of human knowledge.

TODAY'S

That long-promised Building Societies Bill may not have done much to protect what is rapidly becoming an endangered species, but it certainly seems to have set Angela Knight's pulse racing. The Treasury Minister told the Building Societies Association's annual conference last May that she was "pressing, urging, kicking, shouting, pushing, requesting, asking and nagging in order to get the parliamentary time [for this Bill] as soon as possible". And, she reminded her audience, she is "a good nagger". Not good enough, it seems.

Kazakstan creates national wildlife park

Gloucester's veteran open-side flanker followed his feelings to play for Scotland. Steve Bale reports on England's loss

I am an endangered species: one of the 1 per cent of women in Britain who have chosen the cap as their method of birth control. At 49, I have been using it for 17 years with no regrets - and no pregnancies.