TAKING the elevator up to the dome crowning Victoria Square Shopping Centre, peering out over Belfast’s twinkling skyline, I try to take in the changes that have washed over this city.

GALWAY Race Committee yesterday announced a host of new sponsors, at the launch of the Summer Festival Meeting 2010.

A NUMBER of Cork city’s major hotels and guesthouses had to close or turn customers away as a result of last week’s floods.

THE neglected, rabbit-eared television set flickers high on the wall in the corner of the bar. Though ignored, Galway’s Joe Canning nervelessly taps over another free on a night in Semple Stadium that would ultimately see Cork slip quietly from the All-Ireland hurling championship.

The former leader of the INLA in Dublin, Declan `Whacker’ Duffy, has been jailed for four years for membership of the organisation.

A BABY boom at the country’s second largest maternity hospital has forced management to put up expectant mothers in a nearby hotel.

THE grieving families of women who died violently over the last decade gathered for an emotional vigil in Dundalk, Co Louth, yesterday.

THERE was an American senator one time who said “a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re looking at big money”.

Several workers were feared trapped today after 15 floors of scaffolding collapsed “like a pack of cards” at a hotel building site in the UK.

A “number of people” were feared trapped today after a building-site collapse, British police said.

The Minister for Justice today applied to the Central Criminal Court in Dublin for a transcript of the trial of a Portuguese man who was jailed for life for the murder of a young female trainee manager in Limerick’s Jurys Inn in 2002.

SHELBOURNE Developments may walk away from the €364.5 million property deal to buy the Lloyd’s insurance building in London.

SHARES in Jurys Doyle are undervalued, according to Dolmen Securities who believe there is a 23% upside in the shares over the next 12 months.

Gardai have named the woman who was found stabbed to death in a Limerick hotel earlier this morning.

The body of a woman has been found in suspicious circumstances at a hotel in Limerick City.