THE BESIEGED BBC1 controller, Peter Salmon, came out fighting yesterday as he launched his channel's crucial autumn line-up.

SOME OF the world's most endangered bears are struggling for survival in parts of Europe, according to a new report published today by the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Europe.

As production slumps and prices soar, caviar is in short supply for the millennium celebrations

HALIFAX HAVE launched a furious attack on Wigan for "poaching" one of their brightest young prospects. David Hodgson, a 17-year-old winger or centre described by Halifax as as "a future international", has signed for Wigan for next season, by which time his current contract will have expired, writes Dave Hadfield.

A thousand years after its power was first unleashed, this curious weapon still has the capacity to terrorise and fascinate. By John Walsh

Rachel Halliburton trumpets the virtue of this unforgettable flight of fancy from a jumbo-sized talent

Animal Farm, Watership Down, The Jungle Book... writers normally use animals in fiction to say something about human nature. In her ambitious novel about elephants, however, Barbara Gowdy is trying to tell us about them. By Rachel Halliburton

A WORLD ban on luxury shahtoosh wool shawls has failed to stop the slaughter of theTibetan chiru antelope, shot for their fine hair.

LUCKY DAVID Matthews. He rose on the flood-tide of British composers who made their name in the Eighties, but he escaped the frothy fate of a fashion object. When the tide receded it left trendier names beached.

Jeremy Atiyah sips gin and tonic at sundown in Botswana's swish wildlife parks but misses out on the big adventure

It took one 54-year-old American about three hours to track and kill this fully grown giraffe. A few months later its stuffed head will adorn his living-room wall. Kevin Pilley joins the trophy hunters

BOBBY CRUTCHLEY, Cannock's 28-year-old-striker, is the surprise choice in the England squad announced yesterday for June's elite Champions' Trophy event in Brisbane. The jury has been out on Crutchley on occasions but he scores highly for his club and has just finished top National League goalscorer for the fourth successive year. Perhaps he should play his club goal-poaching role for England.

Name: Poacher the Imp.

THE ONE-HORNED rhino lives. Seven months after 39 of the highly endangered leathery behemoths were swept to their deaths by catastrophic flooding that forced hundreds more to flee, a census completed at Kaziranga National Park in Assam, north-east India, on Saturday revealed an increase in rhino numbers of more than 40 per cent over five years.