THE Cypriots are being crucified for their economic sins.

THE claim, made two years ago, that the polar bears alive today had Irish brown bear ancestors has been turned on its head.

LAST month saw the Cheltenham Festival, the election of the first non-European pope in nearly 1,300 years and the continuing saga of horseflesh sold as beef.

THE mad March hare season has arrived. Courtship for Ireland’s fastest mammal, the real ‘Easter bunny’, is a frantic business. Driven by the scent of females in heat, males chase prospective partners who fob them off in dramatic boxing matches.

THE Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, visited the Falkland Islands in 1834.

ON Feb 18, five sperm whales were seen feeding off the northwest coast of Scotland.

RICHARD the Third, according to Shakespeare, was “not shaped for courtly tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking glass”.

WORLD Wildlife Fund president for Spain, King Juan Carlos, was ‘outed’ early last year for hunting elephants in Botswana.

KARL Marx, who died of a chest complaint in 1883, was buried on St Patrick’s Day at Highgate Cemetery in North London.

IN 1950s Limerick, we turned over stones at low tide in the bed of the Shannon to catch eel-fry wriggling underneath.