This week in 1988:

A multi-million-pound national appeal to save Worcester's crumbling Cathedral is expected to be launched soon. Experts warn that £10 million must be spent on the historic treasure over the next 15 years. Extensive repairs and strengthening works to the 700 years-old Cathedral tower are particularly critical to stop it from eventually collapsing. Large-scale restoration work is also urgently needed to the exterior stonework in general which is wearing away at an alarming rate.

* The once hugely successful city council lottery at Worcester looks set to get the chop. In the first two years after its launch in 1977 it made a £200,000 profit towards the city's £1 million Perdiswell Sports Centre. But since then, the civic lotteries' bubble has burst nationwide and proceeds have tumbled dramatically in the face of competing demands from money-raising charities and international famine appeals.

This week in 1978: Firemen in Hereford-Worcester have voted almost three to one in favour of ending their two-month strike. The county brigade voted 120-46 for accepting the latest national pay offer at a mass meeting in Worcester. But Fire Brigade Union county secretary John Gordon said: "We have been starved out. I am disappointed with the decision of members but there it is. The men have been on the bread-line almost nine weeks now."

* British Rail's £1 million scheme for a Parkway station outside Worcester has been given the green light by the county council. Members voted overwhelmingly to grant formal planning approval to the project. They were told that up to 22 inter-city trains a day, currently by-passing Worcester on the main line from the south west, would stop at the proposed Parkway station three miles outside the city at Norton.

This week in 1968: A FLEET of Panda cars was officially handed over to the police at Worcester last week. The eight vehicles started operating in the city on Monday.

Chief Superintendent Joseph Davidson, head of the Worcester Division of the West Mercia Force, said: "The fleet of blue and white Mini Travellers is being introduced to increase police efficiency and cultivate a better understanding with members of the public. This, in effect, will form a closer contact with the public and policemen on the beat and there will be a quicker response to calls for assistance and complaints."

The Panda cars, supplied by HA Saunders Ltd., will operate 24-hours a day.

* Monday night's heavy snowfall caused chaos on the roads throughout the county and closed 22 schools, principally in villages, on Tuesday. Train and bus services were also badly hit. However, most of the roads and schools were re-opened yesterday.

This week in 1958:THE jury at a Bangor inquest on two airmen - one a Worcester man - killed when their Canberra Bomber crashed on the 3,484 ft peak of Carnedd Llewellyn on December 9, were told that an RAF investigation had failed to find the cause of the tragic accident. Verdicts of accidental death were returned on the pilot, Flight Lieutenant William Albert Bell, aged 34, of 29 Teme Road, Tolladine, Worcester, and his navigator, Flt Lt Kenneth Shelley (27) of Hucknall. Their aircraft was returning from Anglesey to their base at the Pershore RAF Station.

* Worcestershire farmers are pressing for the re-introduction of myxomatosis among rabbits. Their county NFU branch is taking up the issue nationally in the belief it would be better to inflict the disease on a few rabbits now rather than after their numbers have increased again to major problem proportions.