SOME MEMBERS of the International Olympic Committ received payments of more than pounds 70,000 each to vote for Salt Lake City as the 2002 Winter Games venue, it was revealed yesterday. TheIOC vice-president, Dick Pound, told The Washington Post that there "is solid, irrefutable evidence" that at least a dozen IOC members or their relatives received cash, gifts or donations from members of the Salt Lake bid committee. The committee last considered the matter in December, after which Sir John Pattison, its chairman, said any decision about continuing the ban should be "based on the science" - which suggested that the initially small risk had shrunk further.Ministers have yet to agree a response to Professor Donaldson's report, but senior Whitehall sources said Mr Brown was likely to announce the beef-on-the-bone ban will stay for the foreseeable future.Though the number of BSE cases in Britain is falling, it is still higher than anywhere else in Europe. Seac met last weekbut the continuation of the ban was not discussed. In future, he will report to the Department of Health and the Food Standards Agency.The Chief Medical Officer's latest advice is not, however, based on any new scientific evidence.

It should reach the statute book in July, around the time that the BSE inquiry is due to deliver its findings.Professor Donaldson's report will be seen as evidence that he will be a champion for consumers' safety against pressure from the farming lobby, and that the Government is serious about tackling the Maff influence over food safety. Margaret Beckett, Leader of the House, said last night that a draft Bill to set up the agency will be published next Wednesday.The Bill will allow a flat charge of about pounds 2 a week to be raised for its running costs from 600,000 food outlets. But the committee did not directly recommend the ban: "Among our recommendations was to do nothing," one member insisted last night.Professor Donaldson's more cautious approach has delighted Whitehall critics of Maff, which had threatened to shelve the proposal for an independent Food Standards Agency until it was rescued by the intervention of Tony Blair. Most of the victims have been under 40, and scientists suggest that the source of the infection was food eaten before various offals were excluded from food in 1990. Nobody knows how many people will eventually succumb to the fatal disease.The beef-on-the-bone ban was introduced in December 1997 after the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (Seac) reported that there was a very small risk of infection through the nervous tissues, called dorsal root ganglia, in the spinal column of joints of beef on the bone. He concludes that although the present risk from eating unboned beef is near zero, lifting the ban would introduce a risk, which he could not countenance.In the past three years, 35 people in Britain have died of "new variant" Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, believed to have been caused by eating BSE- infected food. A decision by Mr Brown to lift the ban would echo the worst behaviour of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff) in the BSE crisis earlier this decade, when it frequently rode roughshod over Department of Health recommendations.Professor Donaldson, who was appointed in September, warns that there is still a danger of maternal transmission of BSE from cow to calf, and recommends that no immediate moves are made to lift the ban on sales of beef on the bone.

Professor Liam Donaldson's report to the Agriculture Minister, Nick Brown, will come as a serious blow to the beef industry, which was struggling to regain its pounds 500m export market after the ending last November of the European Union's ban on British beef. Professor Donaldson's recommendation also presents a test of strength for Mr Brown, who has the final say on whether to continue the ban imposed 13 months ago. The insistent score and over-eager acting take on an increasing whiff of desperation. West End: Virgin Trocadero, Warner Village West EndXan Brooks. HOPES FOR an early end to the beef-on-the-bone ban have been dashed by the new Chief Medical Officer, who has warned ministers that unboned beef could still pass "human BSE" to the public. The dialogue is honed and witty, the situations generally funny and tightly rendered. It's just that Sour Grapes slowly runs out of breath the further it pushes past the 25-minute length. Trouble is, the man's feature-length writing-directing effort is no great shakes: a Seinfeldian comedy of urban neuroses hingeing on the familial spat between Craig Bierko's jackpot winner and the cousin (Steven Weber) who lent him the coins to play the slot-machine.

West End: Empire Leicester Square, Odeon Kensington, Odeon Marble Arch, Odeon Swiss Cottage, UCI Whiteleys, Virgin Fulham Road, Virgin TrocaderoTHE OPPOSITE OF SEX (18)Director: Don RoosStarring: Christina Ricci, Martin DonovanSee The Independent Recommends, right.West End: Barbican Screen, Clapham Picture House, Ritzy Cinema, Screen on Baker Street, UCI Whiteleys, Virgin Fulham Road, Warner Village West EndSOUR GRAPES (15)Director: Larry DavidStarring: Craid Bierko, Steven WeberTV wisdom has it that Seinfeld slumped after co-creator David bailed out of the show. So while Meet Joe Black has a few neat themes, and a reliably solid turn from Hopkins, it's too much a picture of disparate pieces, each played out to their individual lengthy agendas, with no glue in the middle, just vapour. The introductions complete, Brest throws in a romance (between Pitt and Claire Forlani's soulful debutant), a few air-brushed life-lessons, then leaves his tale to drift along for close on three hours. Kounen's en-plein-visage actioner comes with the thumbprints of Reservoir Dogs and Luc Besson all over it. But there's no wit, no urgency - no nothing, really, beyond a few neat set-pieces and lots of gurning overacting Kounen goes a bundle on sudden zooming close-ups. West End: Clapham Picture House, Metro, Odeon Camden Town, Virgin Chelsea, Virgin TrocaderoMEET JOE BLACK (15)Director: Martin BrestStarring: Brad Pitt, Anthony HopkinsPicking his way through Brest's under-developed overhaul of 1934's Death Takes a Holiday goes Brad Pitt's aquiline Grim Reaper, who gets chaperoned round the everyday delights of Planet Earth by Anthony Hopkins's dying billionaire. So this is what the new French cinema is all about: endless stylised carnage and iconic posing, plus a script that's going nowhere fast.

Big guns go off, red sportscars cruise down open freeways, and lily-livered bystanders blub like babies. Still, no matter: Zelenka's droll good-humour and airy idiosyncracies ensure his film is emphatically more treat than trick. West End: ICA CinemaDOBERMANN (18)Director: Jan KounenStarring: Vincent Cassel, Tcheky KaryoVincent Cassel's born-to-be-bad gangster struts and sneers his way through a gleamingly abstracted Paris Tcheky Karyo's bad-egg cop looks on balefully. Inevitably, Buttoners is a mixed bag, saddled with some duff Forties period details plus a smattering of awkward, amateur-night performances. BUTTONERS (KNOFLIKARI) (NC) Director: Petr Zelenka Starring: Jiri Kodet, Borijov NavratilSkipping without warning from pre-Bomb Hiroshima to the present-day Czech Republic, Zelenka's curious little portmanteau piece dovetails a set of six short-stories, some wacky, some sad and all implicitly concerned with notions of forgiveness, community and social tolerance. It's right and proper that we can use the legal system to bring the chickens home to roost against big business.