It made pre-tax profits of £96.5m in the six months to end-February.BELINDA EARLEFrom shop to the top: The limelight-shy Belinda Earl joined the elite rank of female chief executives when she took over from Terry Green in 2000. Ms Earl, 41, was a Saturday girl at the department store and made history when she became the first woman to return to be chief executive of a major company after maternity leave.. Two hundred thousand rabbits a year could be spared an untimely death, thanks to new methods of testing drugs, the European Commission announced yesterday. "The use of animals to test drugs is unfortunately necessary to safeguard human health" he said."But we can reduce, replace and refine animal testing with EU-sponsored research leading the way at world level."In the case of the rabbit pyrogen test, the only possible alternative testing until now was based on the coagulation of blood from the horse- shoe crab. But, fortunately for horseshoe crabs, the results were not considered relevant enough to humans, so the burden of research has continued to fall on rabbits.Now the six human cell-based tests have won the animals a reprieve, and the Commission has promised to continue supporting initiatives to "reduce, replace or refine" animal experimentation.. Hopes were raised last night for two missing members of the television crew accompanying the journalist Terry Lloyd after ITN revealed that they might have escaped the firefight in which he was killed. Mr Wood called Mr Hoon's position "extraordinary".He urged the Defence Secretary to instruct the Royal Military Police, who were in effect responsible for law and order in the area where the incident took place, to "actively investigate the whereabouts" of the two men.ITN also called on the Ministry of Defence to organise the return to Britain of DNA samples from 18 unidentified bodies in the mortuary of al-Jamuriyah Hospital in Basra.Mr Lloyd's body was found in the same hospital after an ITN colleague identified him while watching footage broadcast by the Arab station al-Jazeera.

But ITN believes Nerac and Osman are unlikely to be among the 18.. ITV1 has reversed its recent decline by overtaking BBC1's share of the television audience, although it has had to rely on low-brow offerings such as soap operas and reality TV shows. ITV1 averaged a 24.5 per cent audience share compared with BBC1's 23.9 per cent for the three-week period ending on Sunday 4 May.Much of the success is due to the popularity of I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! In its first week, it averaged 8.7 million viewers and a 36 per cent audience share, compared with 6.9 million and 31.5 per cent last year.Audience share was further boosted by the documentary showing how the army major Charles Ingram tried to cheat his way to the top prize on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Broadcast on Easter Monday, Major Fraud was watched by 15.1 million viewers, the biggest audience for a factual programme for six years.Investment in sport paid off with 12.7 million people watching the second Champions League game between Manchester United and Real Madrid.The BBC first overtook its rival in the all-hours section in August 2001 with strong daytime ratings successes.. Jay Leno, host of the top-rating US talk show, reckons that there are just 18 guests in the world who make a difference to an average TV chat show. It's a curious figure, considering the ever-expanding number of celebrities in the world and the hours of TV filled with chat shows. Now Leno is in the mix too, airing on UK TV for the first time on the cable and satellite channel FTN.Leno insists: "When you think about it, can you name 18 stars that you would watch?" Never mind whether I can; can he?"There are the ones you know: Madonna, Hugh Grant and these people," he says "But after that, [people from] television and supermodels. They're popular – they just don't bring people to the set."But after 10 years hosting The Tonight Show, he must be able to add more names to the list. Leno begins to struggle: "English guests tend to be the best because they know how to talk.