Police divers were today helping in the continuing search for an eight-year-old boy who fell into a swollen river while playing with friends.

Serves 4

They're deliciously tasty, good for you and excellent value.

Brace yourself for some business news. A company called Keolis is bidding for the InterCity West Coast rail franchise, currently operated by Virgin. Keolis is majority-owned by the French state rail operator SNCF, and it is thought the bid might herald a pitch by the same company to run the London-Birmingham High Speed Two line when that is completed.

Their approach to railways is at once hard-headed and romantic

Previously filthy watercourses are now teeming with fish, a new book reveals

I'm in London, I've left my job with the Discovery Channel in the US, and the houseboat fridge is dangerously low on supplies.

Artists have been driven to make painstaking sculptures out of sugar cubes, fish scales and other unusual materials for a new exhibition at Towner contemporary

Ingredients to serve 4

Writing about the natural world is of necessity seasonal. Social Studies, say, or Economic Studies need make no reference to the time of year, but when your theme is Nature you can scarcely avoid it. And having now written 51 weekly examples of Nature Studies, beginning in late April last year with reflections on the blackthorn, and moving on through harebells in high summer, sweet chestnuts in autumn and alpine birds in mid-winter, I find myself back where I began, blossom-surrounded and birdsong-showered – knocking on the door of May.

Starring: Grigory Dobrygin, Sergei Puskepalis, Igor Chernevich

More than £100 million is being provided to help improve England's rivers for wildlife such as otters and trout, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman said today.

My local river is the Wandle. It gives its name to Wandsworth, where I live, and anyone who has ever been through south-west London has probably crossed it without knowing, because there are long underground stretches. But whereas many Thames tributaries live secret, subterranean lives, the Wandle frequently bursts forth - through the parklands of Beddington and Morden Hall, for example.

Serves 4