The family of a 74-year-old British grandfather who was threatened with flogging for breaking Saudi Arabia’s strict anti-alcohol laws have said they are “absolutely thrilled” he is to be released.

Indonesia brushed aside last-minute appeals and executed eight people convicted of drug smuggling, although a Philippine woman was granted a stay of execution.

ALL IS suspense and tension upstairs in bed; we are watching the final episode of The Last Tango in Halifax, series two, on Netflix. 

Check out our guide to tonight's best TV.

Style queen Celia Holman Lee has issued a warning to women contemplating getting a tattoo: "Think of what it will look like when you get old and your skin goes saggy!"

Fondly remembered by the people of his native Rooskey, Albert Reynolds has been described as a "kind gentleman and the pride of the village" by those who knew him.

The €12,155,282 Lotto jackpot winner has managed to remain invisible in a seaside town where all the locals know each other.

MENTION reaching the age of 100 in Ireland and we think of the congratulatory letter and cheque which the president issues and the hope that the recipients can still enjoy their very special birthday.

Sprinter Sacre will not defend his Queen Mother Champion Chase crown at Cheltenham next month.

AN illicit love affair is so quintessentially French that revelations of President François Hollande’s clandestine meetings with Julie Gayet have been greeted by the French with a shrug.

Trainer Nicky Henderson has not ruled out running Sprinter Sacre again this season after the superstar’s heart problem righted itself.

The Christmas Song by Celia and Orison Carlile (Amazon; €4.80) This is a charming offering from a Fermoy-based writing team which sees young Emily so overcome by Christmas anticipation that she just cannot settle down and go to sleep.

She’s beautiful, super-wealthy, influential... but TV3’s Celebrity Apprentice gaffer, Caroline Downey, is nursing a heartache.

YOU would think she had it all. But apparently not.

A nine-year-old girl crawled out of a 200ft California canyon and walked two miles in desert darkness to find help after surviving a horrific car crash.

It’s natural, but that’s no solace when your child moves out, says Rachel Borrill.

The Night Circus

Bear’s Very Snowy Day by Victoria Ball (Caterpillar; €7.10) is a cushioned-cover, tactile book for toddlers.

Piers Morgan and his wife Celia Walden have welcomed a baby girl into the world.

SHE was known for her smile. But friends and colleagues of Celia Ferrer de Jesus, who was tragically drowned when her basement flat was flooded, united in tears at her funeral yesterday.

From the moment it premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s bravura adaptation of the award-winning novel by Lionel Shriver has been generating awards buzz.

TRIBUTES have been paid to a hospice nurse who died when her basement flatflooded.

The Night Circus , Erin Morgenstern. Harvill Secker, £12.99

DEDICATED followers of fashion enjoyed more success in the style stakes than punters seeking to outsmart the bookies on Ladies’ Day at the Listowel Harvest Racing Festival in Co Kerry yesterday.

IT’s 20 years since the iconic movie Thelma and Louise, a cult classic about two women’s wonderful road trip across the US.

Twice Born. Margaret MazzantiniOneworld Publications, £12.99; Kindel, $11.74.

FASHION stylist Celia Holman Lee yesterday spoke of her distress at losing precious jewellery on a night out.

STYLE guru Celia Holman Lee busily married the best of Irish fashion with the royal wedding yesterday as more than 300 — mostly women — crowded Limerick’s Milk Market for a public screening of the nuptials.

COULD Fine Gael be overcompensating a little? Keen to dispel the notion that Enda is ducking a debate, the folk behind the party’s Facebook page are now throwing absolutely everything open to the floor.

HIGH winds and high rollers dominated the fifth day of Cork Week 2010 at Crosshaven yesterday, with as much excitement on land as offshore.

AS he so often proved while giving evidence to the Mahon corruption probe, few people in Irish public life are better at telling stories than Bertie Ahern.

BERTIE AHERN is finished.

FORMER taoiseach Bertie Ahern has denied any suggestion that he used a Manchester-based businessman Michael Wall as a front to buy his home in Dublin in the mid-1990s.

IT’S day 870 in Bertie’s Big Bother house.

IT’S 1993 and the then finance minister and his life partner are enjoying a romantic night in at St Luke’s.

Carla Bruni's mother has doubted claims the former supermodel has wed French President Nicolas Sarkozy, insisting she would know if her daughter had married.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy and fiancée Carla Bruni are expecting their first child.

JIMMY SANDS we will never forget you, went the joke about the status of the 1981 hunger strike in Irish history.

WHEN will there be an inquiry into how Gerry Adams can afford a second home in Donegal?

EXPLAINING Bertie Ahern’s finances feels like trying to catch a tenner that you’ve dropped on a breezy day. Just when you think you have grasped it, another gust of wind carries it away.

SITTING upright in the Mahon corruption probe’s witness box staring intently at a flat screen monitor while questions were fired at him, it looked for all the world as if the Taoiseach was a contestant on some twisted edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?