MUNSTER maintained their stranglehold on top spot in the Magners League with a scrappy victory at the Stadio Luigi Zaffanella yesterday but the win was tainted by the loss of Denis Hurley to a knee injury.

ULSTER got the massive fillip they wanted ahead of next week’s crucial home Euro date against Biarritz with a comfortable Magners League victory over Treviso, despite failing to register a point in the second half.

BIARRITZ gained revenge over Aironi Rugby last night with a convincing Heineken Cup victory in their return Pool 4 match at Parc des Sports Aguilera.

EVIDENCE of a previously unknown species of human that lived alongside our ancestors 40,000 years ago has been uncovered in Siberia.

CUSTOMERS in Germany and Britain lined up to buy the iPhone as it debuted there yesterday, with Apple hoping to replicate the success that the combination mobile phone, music player and web browser has seen in the US.

An insurgent group in Iraq last night posted a video showing a kidnapped German man who has been held for over six months, as the group gave Germany 10 days to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan or the hostage would be killed.

A German woman kidnapped in Iraq earlier this year has been released, but her son is still being held hostage, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said today.

Fighting around the southern Iraq oil fields that US-led forces had previously thought were secure has driven out civilian firefighters trying to put out blazing wells.

MORE evidence linking a rise in allergies with modern living emerged from research in Greenland yesterday.

SIX FEET UNDER, the macabre drama about life and death in an undertakers' parlour, has received a record 23 Emmy nominations.