He said the market for carved ivory had certainly declined in the past 10 years. He will be welcomed by a chorus of sympathy from those ageing lefties who fondly remember taking part in the anti-war demonstrations in the Sixties. Curtly Ambrose and Paul Taylor broke the back of the champions' second innings in a further 21 overs when at 60 for 6, with John Stephenson retired hurt, they were still 24 runs in arrears.With Kevin Curran proving adept at sharing the wickets, Essex were able to set Northamptonshire no more than 63 to win, a victory they accomplished for the loss of Alan Fordham and Rob Bailey before tea.The green of Thursday had all but disappeared from the pitch, suggesting that it had become drier and firmer. It has already stolen the end of his childhood and much of his adolescence. AND WE'RE OFF.

But one of the surest touchstones is the collective opinion of the group of 25 or so born- again Christians in Maghaberry prison. Already John Patten, the Education Secretary, is talking grimly about a crackdown. 'But I think it's good for people to see the inside of a prison. However, it is not clear yet how co- ordinated such attacks are. The two victims were Naftali Sahar, 75, whose body was found in his orange grove near Kibbutz Na'an near Rehovot, apparently killed by an Arab worker, and Ilan Sudri, 23, a taxi-driver whose body was found in a garbage dump near Sderot in the Negev Sudri had last been heard of at 9.30pm on Wednesday.

USAir, in which BA bought a 24.6 per cent stake last year for dollars 400m, yesterday said it expected to make a first-quarter loss of dollars 200m because of competition from lower- cost airlines in eastern US cities. BA intended a further dollars 450m investment to bring its USAir stake to more than 44 per cent if US restrictions on foreign ownership of airlines were relaxed. Both habits restrict blood flow to the unborn child, but nicotine may also have a harmful effect on brain cell development in the third trimester.. He also declared 'ethnic cleansing (the deportation and killing of Muslims in Bosnia) is over'.However, heavy fighting continued in Sarajevo last night, four hours after the ceasefire deadline of 6pm local time agreed by the Bosnian government and its Serbian opponents in London on Friday.In Vienna, the Austrian government said yesterday that its decision to accept a train bearing 824 refugees from Bosnia on Saturday had been an exception based on dire humanitarian need, and did not mean it had reopened its borders to all fleeing from Yugoslavia.'We've told the Croatian government that we will not accept any more refugee convoys of this kind,' said Walter Kratzer, for the Interior Ministry. Somehow one must reduce the incentives to use them.Drug abuse tends not to occur in less physically demanding sports, in which men and women can compete for decades.

The inquiry, supervised personally by the SIB's commanding officer, Lt- Col Theis, interviewed a number of serving Paras and, according to sources who have seen it, the result would take 'several days' heavy reading'.On 28 July, Malcolm Rifkind, the Secretary of State for Defence, approached Barbara Mills, the Director of Public Prosecutions, with the SIB report The MoD wanted help and advice. A play that - he would say - originates from medieval prejudice may even itself have helped that prejudice to survive. The 19th- century ones were, however, on wheels, designed to be horse-drawn right into the water, protecting the bathers' modesty.Le Promenade des Planches, the famous long promenade of wooden planks along which elegant ladies and gentlemen went to see and be seen - and where Boudin probably set up his easel - is still there. French playwrights have the corsets of Racine and Corneille strangling their stagecraft - three actors in a triangle intoning about their lives: it even got to the self-taught Jean Genet. Defeat by the United States in Boston next Wednesday could see the FA staging a momentous tea party of its own.Leading article, page 23(Photograph omitted). The girls who had been to pre-school had fewer teenage pregnancies; the boys were significantly less likely to get into trouble with the law.Now, as they approach their thirties, the former pre-school pupils continue to astonish: they enjoy higher earnings, are more likely to own their homes and less likely to have been arrested than people in the other group. We are in a very different world from the one in which Keynesian doctrines took root.