An Irish pharmacist has stepped in to help a Syrian chemist who fled war-torn Homs for Ireland after his business was destroyed by a car bomb.

LAST November on this page I compared independent TD (and former Fine Gael minister) Michael Lowry to Mario Balotelli, the petulant bad-boy of European football who once pulled up his shirt to reveal a t-shirt bearing the legend “why always me?”

A Venezuelan woman who acted as a drugs mule to traffic over €200,000 worth of cocaine from Buenos Aires to Cork Airport earlier this year was jailed for three years this evening.

REFEREEING decisions have been the dominant topic in much of European football for a fortnight, not least thanks to Michel Platini’s various amusing interventions.

Tommy Barker

Nature’s Way pleaded guilty at Kilkenny District Court today to eight breaches of the Product Prices Regulations 2002 and was fined €6,000.

THE Cork-based couple who built up a major pharmacy chain over 15 years yesterday expressed their satisfaction about their group remaining in Irish control.

THE UniPhar pharmacy group are on the lookout for further acquisitions after their takeover of the Cork chemists chain Phelans.

GLORIOUS autumnal conditions favoured the Royal Cork Offshore Day and, in a light to moderate south easterly breeze Class One sailed around the Cork Buoy, down to the Bullman Buoy off Kinsale and back to the finish at Roches Point.

By Jim Morahan,