BOOKSELLER Eason’s managed to more than halve its total losses in its last financial year.

THE Hughes & Hughes brand is to be preserved with the reopening of five stores and plans for further expansion.

MORE than 50,000 retail jobs will be lost over the next 12 months unless the Government takes action to address the problem of upward-only rent reviews for existing lease holders, shop owners warned yesterday.

Eason and Son bookstores have taken over the running of the Hughes & Hughes newsagents at Cork and Dublin airports.

EASON has taken over the bookshop licences at Dublin and Cork airports, vacated last week by Hughes & Hughes going into receivership.

FINANCE company Postbank, which operates in about 1,000 of the country’s post offices, is to pull out of Ireland by the end of the year.

Nationwide bookselling chain Hughes & Hughes has gone into receivership today.

An attempt was made to set fire to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s state car tonight.

WH SMITH, the British high-street news, book and stationery retailer, is to formalise its expansion into the Republic, with the opening of two stores at Shannon Airport before the end of the year.

PAUL McGrath, John Boyne, Patrick McCabe and Paul Howard, aka Ross O’Carroll Kelly, were among the winners at the prestigious Irish Book Awards 2007 announced at a glittering ceremony in Trinity College last night.

CORK AIRPORT’S new €160 million terminal passed its first major test yesterday with flying colours.

Ian Guider

COFFEE bar chain Insomnia has snapped up the six Perk shops in Dublin for around €1 million.