McDonnell Douglas is believed to be in talks with Raytheon about combining their aviation and defence businesses or even possibly an outright merger, which could herald one more big consolidation of the US defence industry.

Vermont Connecticut Royster, who was born in North Carolina and lived most of his life in New York, was one of the most distinguished and unflagging journalists produced in America this century.

Did you snigger at the farmer who, after reaching an impasse in a bitter dispute with NatWest bank, emptied his muckspreader on them? Well, control yourself. This excitable vigilante (right) is pounds 2,000 poorer. The bank, being unable to see the funny side of their front door, sued him to recover the cost of removing his unauthorised, ahem, deposit.

Chrysler Motor Company is strengthening its defences against a possible fresh bid attack by tycoon Kirk Kerkorian, doubling its stock buy-back programme to $2bn, writes David Usborne in New York.

ITT and Dow Jones have agreed to buy television channel WNYC-TV from the City of New York for $207m (pounds 129m) cash. The companies plan to create a business and sports channel offering professional and college sports from ITT and financial and

PHIL DAVISON

OJ industry / one year on

Change of mind at NationsBank

HEALTH CARE reform may be dead, but political obituaries of its most celebrated architect are decidedly premature. Hillary Clinton, make no mistake, is a chastened, saddened and perhaps wiser woman in the wake of the most crushing failure of her husband's presidency. But she is not about to turn to a life of cookie-baking.

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - President Bill Clinton's handling of Haiti has helped him in the polls, according to a survey released yesterday by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News.

AT THE END of this collection of essays, Saul Bellow is asked whether he despairs of modern life. 'Do I look or sound despairing?' he replies. 'My spirits are as high as ever. Not despair - anger. Contempt and rage.' It is not all that common to find a man - especially a shy, sensitive type such as a Nobel prize-winning novelist - whose spirits are given a lift by sheer anger at the world. But that's Saul Bellow for you: strong stuff. Other writers cheer themselves with vodka and tonic; Bellow prefers contempt and rage - shaken, stirred and almost on the rocks.

NEW YORK - In what police say is tale out of a whodunit, a senior researcher at Rockefeller University is the suspect in a case involving poison, arson and threatening letters aimed at fellow workers. John Hill, the Assistant Chief of Police, said the hunt centres on someone in a genetics unit with 40 staff.

THE MEDIA attention, inevitably, was on Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and on the 50 or so Jewish demonstrators who turned out to greet him. But the real topic of this week's gathering of the great and good of black America is far more sombre - how to tackle what one historian has called 'perhaps the greatest crisis since slavery.' Of that crisis, the fuss caused by Mr Farrakhan's periodic anti- Semitic outbursts is only a small part.

WHEN Downing Street was pondering what to give Bill Clinton as a D-Day gift on his arrival in Britain last weekend, one bright spark came up with the idea of presenting him with a video of Darryl F Zanuck's epic The Longest Day. Given that John Major's original suggestion had been a Surrey county cricket tie, the idea of the video won on points - until somebody in the Clinton camp told Number 10 that Bill and Hillary had in fact watched their own copy of the film recently in a private White House screening, to get into training for Normandy.