With fewer than 2,500 giant pandas left in the wild and 312 living in captivity, every breeding pair is vital to the continued survival of the species. Little wonder that the imminent arrival in Britain of a couple with a successful reproductive history – the first pandas to be in the UK for 17 years – has been eagerly anticipated by conservationists and animal lovers.

The Government's failure to ban wild animals in circuses has been criticised by a former expert adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Animals are a recurrent presence in Bill Callahan's songs. Cattle, bees, birds, buffalo and horses abound, romping through his oeuvre either literally or as strange metaphors – as in "Universal Applicant" from his new album, Apocalypse, in which a small menagerie laughs at the singer as he manages to burn his own boat with a flare gun.

The opening of Jane Harris's clever and entertaining second novel gives little indication of how dark it will become. Harriet Baxter, a cultured and refined woman approaching her 80th year, sits in her London flat in 1933 writing a memoir of events that happened in Glasgow in 1888. We are addressed directly as "Reader", as in a Victorian novel, such words as "sojourn" are used, and the writing is measured and stately. Yet a faint tinge of something wild and overwrought underlies.

Molly, the world's oldest captive orang-utan, died yesterday at the age of 59 at Tokyo's Tama Zoological Park. She arrived at Ueno Zoological Gardens, also in Japan's capital, from Indonesia in 1955 aged three. In the past decade, she had become well known in the country as an artist after developing a talent for drawing with crayons.

Berlin Zoo's celebrity polar bear, Knut, drowned after swelling of his brain caused him to collapse and fall into a pool in his enclosure, a post-mortem examination has found.

They stare lifelessly from every shelf: platypus, slipper lobster, flying fox, penguin, pocket gopher, hagfish, tiger, tapir, koala, sea squirt, elephant, tree shrew, dodo, armadillo and thousands more. Elsewhere, 18 baby moles are crammed in a jar, like hairy gobstoppers in a sweet shop.

The highly strung citizens of New York have yet another reason to feel on edge this morning: one of the world's most venomous creatures has escaped from its secure enclosure at The Bronx Zoo.

Bargain Hunter regulars will be pleased to hear that Giordano Wines' incredible food, drink and kitchenware offer has returned for a third time. The offer is one of the most popular to have appeared in this column and, this time around, features eight Italian red wines, four Italian white wines, a selection of Italian delicacies (including grissini breadsticks, traditional tajarin egg noodles, cantucci biscuits, olive sauce, artichoke cream and sun-dried tomatoes with capers) and the incredible "amazing table" selection – a six-piece cook and serve dinner set decorated in a traditional Mediterranean style. The whole package is available for a staggering £59.95, including free delivery, although it continues only as long as current stocks last.

Brain problems apparently caused the shockingly early death of Knut, Germany's four-year-old celebrity polar bear, the Berlin Zoo said Tuesday.

Animal rights groups have sharply criticised Berlin's zoo, saying that the way the polar bear Knut was raised and held in captivity could have led to his death at such a young age.