A former quarry near one of Britains' biggest shopping centres could become a new town of 15,000 people

Part of  Westminster Abbey is to open to the public for the first time in centuries as part of the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations.

An American diver believes he has found the buccaneer's flagship three centuries after his execution for terrorising ships on the high seas.

The National Cycle Network, chosen as a landmark project to celebrate the millennium, was funded with £42 million of Lottery money and consists of 5,000 miles of both off-road and traffic-calmed routes in Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as unmarked routes along mostly quite lanes. By 2005, a further 4,000 miles will be added and the network will be complete. This network is to do much of the work of making the UK a place in which cycling is something less than insanely dangerous and, hey, even health inducing.

For those of us who daily suck down fumes as we cycle behind buses, waiting only for the moment when some clown in a white van opens his door and projects us into orbit, the growth of this network, though not in itself enough, is no bad thing.

That said, it is inevitable that the National Cycle Network will primarily be a leisure facility. Most of it runs through beautiful rural districts that deserve to be savoured at a relaxed speed. The network has been designed by a small charity called Sustrans, which is short for Sustainable Transport.

Typical is the new 200-mile section opening in early June called the Coast and Castles Cycle Route. It starts in Newcastle, runs along Hadrian's Wall for a stretch, then up the wonderful castly coastline of Northumbria, up and down the Tweed valley before reaching Edinburgh.

This is one of the safe, attractive routes that should ideally be used in conjunction with the integrated public transport system. Which would be nice if there was one. True, many of the routes devised by Sustrans have rail connections. But that is not enough and the cumulative effect of cycle-unfriendliness on the railways is that many people feel obliged to transport their bikes by car, which is no way to carry on.

But that's enough carping. Sustrans' work in negotiating with 400 councils, landowners, businesses and what can only be described as the British Railways Board to push cycle routes through this patchwork quilt of a multi-owner-occupied kingdom deserves a great deal of credit.

A redevelopment programme for the  South Bank Centre, London, is being held up due to planning permission delays, say officials.