Some of the stranger stories from around the world

The Restaurants Association of Ireland has claimed the mandatory display of calories counts on menus will cost its industry €110m and thousands of jobs.

The live-in boyfriend of actor Morgan Freeman’s granddaughter was charged with her murder yesterday, US police said.

Greek legislators approved a bailout package that may unlock as much as €86 billion and help the nation avoid a default next week when it has to make a payment to the European Central Bank.

Mara Wilson, who played Matilda and Kiami Davael, who played Lavender shared their lunch date reunion snap on Twitter.

Plans to force restaurants and takeaways to display calorie counts on menus from next year have been slammed as “impossible to police” and will cost the industry over €100m a year.

And not just because she pranks Justin Timberlake.

Vladimir Putin’s nostalgia for the Soviet Union has never been a secret but, post-Crimea, the Kremlin has been actively campaigning for a return to a totalitarian state, writes Owen Matthews.

Orange Is The New Black may allow Jason Biggs move beyond the teen comedy, says Ed Power.

Nicolas Cage will star in supernatural thriller 'Pay the Ghost'.

Classical music star Katherine Jenkins has announced her engagement.

Moves to force restaurants to display calorie counts on menus will cost the industry €110m a year, according to the Restaurant Association of Ireland.

Detectives found almost 50 envelopes, branded “Ace of Spades,” containing what is believed to be heroin, in the apartment of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was found dead on Sunday.

European banks have a capital shortfall of as much as €767bn, a study suggests, as the ECB probes the financial health of the region’s lenders.

THE recent announcement of a laureate for Irish fiction, for which the recipient will be awarded €150,000 over three years, is welcome for writers and readers.

Retiring police dogs sniff out pensions

You couldn’t blame me for pining for Pana on Monday night.

In the face of a UN Security Council deadlocked on Syria, the US and its allies could seek other means of legitimising any retaliatory strike they launch against Syria’s government for last week’s alleged gas attack on civilians.

She was a Polish farmer’s daughter who emigrated to the United States, a maid who worked for a wealthy American heir, a third wife who inherited much of the Johnson & Johnson fortune after a sensational court battle with her six stepchildren.

From fashion designers to actors and businesswomen to models, the next generation of young Irish people has thrown up some significant talent across a range of professions. These young people are among a pool of highly-accomplished achievers whose remarkable successes to date are bucking recessionary trends and putting their country back on the map.

In May, as the eurozone veered deeper into crisis, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman penned one of his gloomiest columns in the New York Times entitled “Apocalypse Fairly Soon”.

Bono’s youngest daughter has revealed how her rockstar father was responsible for the greatest moment of her life when he brought Beyoncé home with him.

A chemical banned from baby bottles has been linked to an increased risk of childhood obesity.

Manchester United’s owners stand to make about three times their investment in the club if it successfully goes public.

Toddlers’ television- viewing habits have a direct impact on their fitness and fatness in later childhood, a study has shown.

Debra Messing has filed for divorce from her husband of 11 years.

A blind Chinese legal activist who was suddenly allowed to leave the country arrived in the US, ending a nearly month-long diplomatic tussle that had tested US-China relations.

Dakota Fanning will never join Twitter.

They may be thousands of miles from home but the players and supporters of New York GAA are able to maintain their links with Ireland through Gaelic Games, reports Brendan O’Brien

Never was there a greater need to sell Ireland abroad. That fact of economic reality underlines the importance of the Government’s promotional visit to the US.

DECEMBER saw the first decline in activity in the services sector for a year, prompting one international economist to suggest that the Irish economy is officially in double-dip recession mode.

Terry Richardson’s book of photographs says little new about the megastar performer, Ian Forde reports

MADELINE Follin can’t believe the twist her life has taken. Growing up in a hippy enclave of San Diego, a career in the music business was the last thing she wanted.

Americans Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims have won the Nobel economics prize “for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy”.

As Though She Were Sleeping

A WOMAN’S work is never done, especially when that work involves excavating the fears, hopes and traumas that lie at the heart of crime fiction.

James Franco has split from his long-term girlfriend.

Alec Baldwin is said to be "smitten" with a 28-year-old yoga instructor.

MARKING Osama bin Laden’s death where the terrorist inflicted his greatest damage, President Barack Obama soberly laid a wreath yesterday at Ground Zero and declared to the city and the world, “When we say we will never forget, we mean what we say.”

MARY-KATE and Ashley Olsen, whom most people know as the diminutive former child stars of Full House and an endless stream of straight-to-video tween movies, are inspecting a rolling rack of crisp white cotton shirts and another one lined with black stretch-leather leggings seemingly sized for miniature gazelles.

James Franco has signed up for new film 'The Stare'.

While Ireland remains a popular study option for US students, equally a world of educational opportunity awaits the Irish stateside with a range of financial supports on offer, writes Education Correspondent Niall Murray