Some of Ireland’s best chefs are stirring things up for the first time in the Irish Book Awards.

THE Government should move future budgets to February to promote consumer confidence prior to Christmas, the most valuable retail window of the year, says one prominent business owner.

Dundalk: Bookstore Hughes & Hughes has reopened its Dundalk store with the creation of eight jobs, bringing to six the number of stores re- opened by holding company Sivota Limited.

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

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.

A cocaine addict found with "a veritable arsenal" of guns and ammunition on the M50 has been given a five year sentence by Judge Donagh McDonagh at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

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

A man who savagely beat two neighbours across the head with a table leg after his wife got into an argument late at night with one of the victims' daughters has been jailed for seven years by Judge Michael White at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.