It lived in the Yangtze river for millions of years and was revered by the Chinese as the ”goddess” of the mighty river. But now scientists believe that the baiji, a white, freshwater dolphin, is extinct. A painstaking six-week hunt on the Yangtze for any remaining signs of the baiji ended this month with the news scientists had been dreading: there don’t appear to be any remaining.

The Spanish have waited for a very long time to hear the announcement by ETA, the armed Basque separatist movement, that it is declaring a permanent ceasefire from March 24. This will be an extremely important milestone if it indeed marks the end of a 40-year campaign of terrorist violence that has left hundreds dead, many of them innocent civilians.

Enraged citizens taking to the streets is one of the recurring themes of French history. But the latest bout of rioting in the suburbs of north-east Paris is a toxic and modern mixture of alienated ethnic minority youth and a heavy-handed response by the security forces.

Europe is on high alert after Greece became the first European Union country to confirm a case of bird flu. Greek Minister of Agriculture Evangelos Basiakos reported the case on a turkey farm on the Aegean Sea island of Oinouses, near the coast of Turkey, on Tuesday last week.

In case anyone was thinking that Britain’s nuclear installations were clean and green, there comes a chilling reminder that they are far from being either. A leak — a real leak, rather than a piece of spin doctoring — of highly radioactive uranium and plutonium last month forced the closure of the Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield in northern England.

Cláudio Hummes, the Archbishop of Sao Paolo, is a potential successor for Pope John Paul II. One of 15 children, he is a former radical sometimes accused of trimming his views to further his career. As bishop of Santo Andre from 1975 to 1996, he opposed Brazil’s military regime and backed workers’ action. See the other candidates in line for the role of the 264th pope: