The Highland cottage owned by disgraced TV presenter Jimmy Savile will be sold at auction today.

World number five Rafael Nadal has criticised the decision of a Spanish court to destroy more than 200 blood bags seized during Operation Puerto – and therefore allow those involved to remain nameless.

Four police officers have been injured in another night of loyalist rioting linked to the Union flag row in the North.

Solicitors’ and accountants’ offices were searched during raids carried out on both sides of the Irish border today in a fresh crackdown on fuel smugglers who cost the UK exchequer millions in lost revenue.

THE Irish pimp arrested in Britain in an operation against human trafficking, rules the sex industry in the midlands with an iron fist, regularly assaulting the women he controls.

A Carlow man at the centre of a major internet-based prostitution ring was among 10 people arrested today as police smashed an international human trafficking gang.

An anti-terror detective failed to check pictures which could have stopped police in the UK mistaking Jean Charles de Menezes for a suicide bomber, an inquest heard today.

THE cash haul in the huge Garda Operation Platinum mounted to target Limerick’s feuding drugs gangs rose to €250,000 yesterday after further searches in the city.

Fine Gael has hit out at the Justice Minister, Brian Lenihan, claiming that he has instigated a scaling down of garda operations targeting gangland crime.

A man and a woman were tonight being questioned by police about human trafficking after three women were rescued from a house in Belfast.

A massive covert investigation is under way into trafficking of people into Ireland to be sold for sex and work, the Government revealed today.

Police in the Philippine capital Manila went on heightened alert today, a day after authorities uncovered an alleged new coup plot against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and opposition groups called for a massive rally next week.

THE Iraqi government said yesterday a security cordon of 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and police will ring Baghdad starting next week in what it dubbed Operation Lightning.

A man who US investigators said sold fake identification papers to two of the September 11 hijackers fled to Egypt hours before authorities raided his home and businesses today.

Fierce fighting has raged for a fifth day in Afghanistan as the United States deployed hundreds of reinforcements for an offensive aimed at finishing off al-Qaida.