A nationwide hunt for two girls allegedly abducted from their foster parents at knifepoint ended after they were found safe and well, police said today.

"YOU'D THINK with all the money they saved on not having Christmas lights, they could afford to clear the pavements more than they have..." This was a grumble I heard in a shop in Bath earlier this week, as the ice and slush built up. Well, not so much a grumble, really, as a ritual moan. The good burghers of Bath are used to acting as a sort of Greek chorus, standing by and wringing their hands while the council enacts its ancient role of tragic buffoon...

Tony Blair insisted this week that he leads a `One Nation' Government and that the divide in the country is between rich and poor rather than North and South

POLICE

AS PEOPLE wheezily explain that a cough is the aftermath of a cold, they do not ponder such paradoxical usage of the word.

We didn't learn much about Monty Python that we didn't already know from Long Live the Dead Parrot Tues, R4), but it confirmed a couple of suspicions. The first is that they were never that subversive or original - the wacky approach had been pioneered by the Goons - and their subversion was hardly the stuff that made the establishment quake in its shoes. ("This Monty Python," said Margaret Thatcher, after being shown the dead- parrot sketch so she would at least have some idea of the joke her speech- writers had gingerly lifted for her, "is he one of us?")

When the photographer Bill Peronneau visited Muhammad Ali at his Pennsylvania training camp, he had little idea that the greatest sportsman of the century was preparing for the fight of his life

CLEVELAND WILLIAMS, a 6ft 31/2in slab of Texan muscle, was a boxer who had a tendency to find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

THE FIRST hints that scientists may be on the path to solving one of the biggest conundrums in the universe were revealed yesterday by physicists in search of the mysterious missing matter of space.

SUNDAY. Get up, go to the gym. They are playing bad pop music which annoys me, but it's good to work out sometimes. Go a bit over the top and when I get home my hands are too stiff to do some riazs. Go down to rehearsals: it is the first day and I am a bit nervous about whether the string section will live up to the Madras Philharmonic Orchestra. I ask them to practise on their own first, then join us - it sounds great. It is good at last to have a chance to play with Steve White (a great drummer, who usually plays with Paul Weller). All of the band have wanted to play together for ages. Oroh keeps asking us to pinch him, he is so happy he thinks it must be a dream. Rehearsals rock. I rush back to the studio to meet some friends, hang out and play some music. My mate Dion brings some food that Simon has made; stuff myself with excellent lamb. I rush home to Dyson my house before my friend Ajay (vocalist on the album) arrives from NYC.

FOUR CONSTRUCTION workers fell 80ft to their deaths yesterday when a gantry they were working on gave way on a motorway viaduct.

Sir: I am sure Prince Philip intended to say "cowboy" and not "Indian" ("Duke of Edinburgh forced to apologise for racist remark", 11 August). He got his wires crossed, that's all. For goodness sake, he is 78.

Sir: The photograph accompanying your TV preview "Documentary of the Day: Man on the Moon" (13 July) now reveals the true reason why the exploration of the Moon ceased so suddenly. The devastating effect on Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin is a reminder that exploration of the universe will be fraught with unexpected horrors.

Edinburgh