The US unemployment rate spiked to 7.2% in December, adding to the economic gloom that faces incoming President Barack Obama.

LAST Saturday, Transport Minister Noel Dempsey received an unexpected weekend call from a senior official in his department.

WE are writing to enquire whether you or other members of the mainstream media are aware of the growing concern in the US and Europe over the official findings of the 9/11 commission.

WHAT should have been a five-minute cable car ride turned into a nearly 12-hour ordeal for dozens of people who had be rescued yesterday after two cars lost power over New York's East River.

What should have been a routine ride across New York’s East River became an hours-long ordeal after what US authorities described as a power failure left two cable cars carrying almost 70 people dangling hundreds of feet in the air.

UNION officials who exposed widespread immigrant abuses last week were in Poland yesterday on a fact-finding mission.

UNION officials who exposed widespread immigrant abuses last week were in Poland yesterday on a fact-finding mission.

IF you look through the cronies of Tony’s who make up the British cabinet, you thank God for small mercies.

A former garment factory-owner convicted of enslaving, starving and beating his workers in American Samoa was ordered to pay $1.8m (€1.5m) in compensation and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

PEOPLE must ready themselves for having non-national workers as a permanent feature of Irish society, though numbers coming into the country may have to be limited, a trade union conference was told at the weekend.

THE country’s largest union yesterday called on the Government to establish a dedicated Department of Labour as shocking evidence of abuse against migrant workers continues to emerge on a daily basis.

THE Mahon Tribunal is to examine floor plans of Leinster House in the 1980s to decide if a description Tom Gilmartin gave of a meeting there is consistent with the layout of the building at the time.

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern and Sligo businessman Tom Gilmartin have given the Mahon Tribunal conflicting accounts of meetings they had to discuss the redevelopment of Bachelors Walk in the late 1980s.

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern has given three outside experts nine weeks to identify cutbacks of some €1 billion next year in efforts to control spiralling public spending.

The decision by the Government to appoint a group of three experts to scrutinise projected expenditure will inevitably bring the cynical reaction that it is a handwashing exercise in anticipation of public outcry at the present and future cuts in public spending.

The Government has agreed to establish an expert group to advise Departments on spending for next year.