With one, brief announcement, the face of English football changed yesterday and the prospect of the world’s greatest footballer Lionel Messi plying his trade in a former industrial wasteland in east Manchester suddenly became wholly more plausible.

Chinese investors are paying $400m (€378m) for a stake in the group that owns soccer clubs including Manchester City and New York City FC, the country’s most significant overseas investment in the game.

The HSE’s acting national director of acute hospitals, Angela Fitzgerald, was asked eight times on RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland if emergency departments are safe but failed to answer.

Tackling the problem of cross-contamination in hospitals, Waterford company CMC Hygea has come up with a practical solution — a basin and liner system that incorporates germ-killing anti-microbial technology.

Pressure is mounting on Bank of England governor Mark Carney ahead of tomorrow’s interest rates meeting as gathering signs of economic cheer cast doubt over his forward guidance strategy.

The head of one of the country’s largest private healthcare providers has confirmed that the Mater Private Hospital is planning to open in Cork on Jan 2.

Ulster Bank customers are being warned to watch out for bogus emails from fraudsters trying to gain access to their bank details.

The chief prosecutor in Trinidad has declared that further investigations may be needed into how around $1m was brought into the country and paid to Caribbean football officials last year.

A €90m privately-developed hospital with the potential to create 250 jobs is to remain closed after the State-owned VHI said the facility is not required to meet its needs in Munster.

The VHI is expected to decide this week if it will cover Mater Private, Cork for the use of the €90m privately-developed hospital in Mahon for its members.

BON SECOURS, the country’s largest private healthcare provider, has been refused cover by VHI for a planned €80m extension at its Cork hospital.

A NEW private hospital planned for Cork city looks set to follow the same fate as its doomed predecessor following a VHI decision not to provide cover for its customers at the facility.

THE Bon Secours Hospital in Cork is pressing ahead with plans for an €80 million expansion despite the announcement by the Mater Private that it intends to open a 75-bed hospital in the city by the end of the year.

ONE of the country’s leading private hospitals, the Mater Private, is to open in Cork by the end of the year as part of a €75 million investment.

SHEEHAN Medical Ltd, the developers of a failed €90 million private hospital, are planning to voluntarily liquidate the company.

AN investment advisory firm involved in a €90 million private hospital development in Cork city has petitioned the High Court to wind up the hospital’s backers, Sheehan Medical Ltd.

MORE than 100 unsecured creditors of a former private hospital who between them are owed more than €4 million are unlikely to receive any money following liquidation of the company.

MATER Private Healthcare has confirmed its interest in the takeover of a €90 million Cork hospital that closed just five months after it opened.

OVER 100 rally cars will race around Cork city’s former landfill site later this month in a special charity fundraiser.

STAFF and creditors of a failed €90 million private hospital in Cork expressed disappointment and anger over its closure that has left them “high and dry”.

A LIQUIDATOR is due to be appointed today at a meeting of creditors of a €90 million private hospital that closed in March, just five months after it opened.

CREDITORS of a €90 million private hospital owed money since its closure five months ago have been advised that a liquidator will be appointed shortly.

CREDITORS owed money on foot of the closure of a private hospital in Cork are seeking advice from a Dublin businessman whose company secured a €526,000 judgement against the developers in the High Court.

BOUNCED cheques and emergency tax rates are among the difficulties faced by former staff of a private hospital in Cork city which closed just five months after it opened.

AN investment advisory firm involved in a €90 million private hospital development in Cork city backed by Sheehan Medical Limited has successfully sued them for more than €500,000.

STAFF are owed wages and holiday pay but investors are unlikely to lose out following the closure of the country’s newest private hospital just five months after it opened.

FORMER staff at what was the country’s newest private hospital have been told there is no money to pay their wages and they could also face difficulties claiming unemployment benefit because of a lockdown of the Cork Medical Centre (CMC) where their P45s are on file.

IT would be a “terrible tragedy” if the country’s newest private hospital was forced to close but it was not in his gift to instruct the VHI to provide cover, Health Minister James Reilly said yesterday.

A PRIVATE equity firm with a majority stake in the Mater Private hospital is believed to be one of a number of potential investors in discussions with a new hospital which has had to close because it cannot get VHI approval.

Cork Medical Centre is not the first private hospital in Cork to open its doors only to discover the VHI unwilling to come on board, thus scuppering its future, writes Catherine Shanahan

IS there no end to Ireland’s ability to waste resources? Did the previous government and the banks not do enough damage, without the VHI following on with further destruction?

VHI say they cannot afford to provide cover for the Cork Medical Centre, or any other new private hospital development.

CORK’S TDs are seeking a meeting with the chief executive of Vhi Healthcare next week in a bid to save a private hospital from closure.

THE country’s newest and most advanced private hospital will close within months unless the VHI provides health cover.

SCARCELY four months after it opened, the country’s newest private hospital will today put its 75-strong workforce on protective notice following failure to convince the VHI to cover the facility.

THE country’s newest private hospital will create up to 100 medical jobs within weeks.

The pound was at a six-month low against the euro today amid mounting expectations for the Bank of England to pump more money into the economy.

A NEW €90 million state-of-the-art medical centre in Cork is a “medical mall” on the cutting edge of experimentation with the very best of equipment and staff, according to the hospital’s chief executive.

All eyes will be on the markets again today to gauge their reaction to yesterday's bank bailout announcements.

Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin called today on countries across the world to join Ireland in outlawing cluster bombs.

The FTSE 100 Index shed more than 2% today as markets reacted with initial disappointment to US economic rescue plans.

The London market dived almost 6% today in the wake of the Bank of England’s shock 1.5% interest rate cut.

The London stock market steadied today as traders attempted to digest yesterday’s dramatic efforts to tackle the global financial crisis.