The Environmental Protection Agency published figures yesterday that showed that air pollution linked to road traffic broke EU emission ceilings in 2011.

Daniel Day Lewis is the first man to win three best actor awards at the Oscars.

It is difficult to see how the measures unions still involved in the Croke Park II talks have agreed to recommend to their members will save the necessary €300m in the next nine months — or €1bn before 2016.

Congratulations to the Irish women’s rugby team, which beat Scotland over the weekend by 30 points to 3 to win the Triple Crown for the first time.

Women’s Aid is launching its third annual 2in2u campaign to promote public awareness in order to prevent another generation of domestic abuse.

Sometimes it’s very hard to see the wood from the trees, and in a society — and a world — struggling to come to terms with frightening unemployment figures, falling incomes, globalisation, and lives corralled by unmanageable debt, that, naturally, may be even more difficult.

We seem to be approaching the point where it will be easier to identify the meat plants that have not been embroiled in the horsemeat fraud than it will be to list those that have.

The entirely predictable furore around child benefit reforms encapsulates so much of the dysfunction and evasion that have damaged this society.

Some of those who oppose property taxes occupied Revenue Commissioners offices in Kilkenny yesterday urging staff not to co-operate with plans to deduct unpaid taxes from pay packets.

Few people will dispute the urgent need for radical reform of the inequities of a child benefit system that gives the children of the poorest families in Ireland the same level of support as the children of millionaires.