Vautour assumed clear favouritism for the JLT Novices’ Chase at Cheltenham after getting his fencing career back on track with a facile success in the Leopardstown Killiney Novice Chase yesterday.

The family of one of the women seen being kicked and threatened by nurses at Aras Attracta has hit out at the alleged death threats and online abuse aimed at the perpetrators, insisting they “abhor violence in every shape or form” and will not support “mob rule”.

US job growth increased steadily in October and the unemployment rate fell to a fresh six-year low, underscoring the economy’s resilience in the face of slowing global demand.

Kerry SFC: Rangers 1-15 St Brendan’s 0-12

There was some competitive fare on offer at yesterday’s well-attended West Waterford Foxhounds point-to-point fixture at Lismore and handler John Queally, who was on the mark with former pointer Gaillimh A Chroi in the listed mares’ bumper at Sandown on Saturday, appears to have a cracking prospect on his hands in Uncle Danny who readily put his rivals to the sword in the five-year-old geldings’ maiden.

Willie Mullins’ Blood Cotil, in the McCarthy Insurance Group Beginners Chase, is easily the most interesting horse on show at Cork this afternoon.

A gay teacher at a Catholic high school in Philadelphia has been sacked after applying for a licence to marry his partner of 12 years.

Limerick City’s poetry competition wants to bring the funny five-line format home. Must it be vulgar? asks Jonathan deBurca Butler

St Brendan’s District1-10 Finuge 0-11(After extra-time)

St Brendan’s District 1-10 Finuge 0-11(After extra-time)

Post-mortems will be carried out today on the bodies of three brothers who drowned when their fishing vessel overturned at sea.

THERE were mixed views on the streets of Cork as new bylaws reducing the speed limit to 30km/h in parts of Cork city centre were implemented yesterday.

THE anvil was singing away on the first afternoon I was stopped in my tracks by the sight and sound of Tom O’Sullivan’s roadside forge in Ballinacally, Co Clare.

A CONTEMPORARY take on the dormer form is shown to good effect with Kelp Lodge, a 3,000 sq ft heavily glazed family home at Fenor, Waterford.

NOT even one’s last resting place is sacred as council officials pursue, to the grave, people who flout planning laws.

Shuttle Discovery was in fast pursuit of the international space station today following a spectacular launch that one astronaut called “the greatest show on Earth”.

The shuttle Atlantis blasted off today with Europe’s gift to the international space station, a $2bn (€1.6bn) science lab named Columbus that spent years waiting to set sail.

There is no evidence astronauts were drunk or had been drinking heavily before launching into space, Nasa said today.

The space shuttle Atlantis was in pursuit of the international space station today, but will not catch it until tomorrow afternoon.

A MOTHER watched in horror as one of her twin toddlers choked to death on a sausage, it emerged yesterday.

Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery woke up to their first day in space today, where the first order of business will be to make sure their ship was not damaged during launch.

Nasa will today hold a meeting in Cape Canaveral, Florida, to decide whether to try to launch space shuttle Discovery overnight.

Nasa may be going to the same old moon with a ship that looks a lot like a 1960s Apollo capsule, but the space agency said it is going to do something dramatically different this time: stay there.

Nasa managers were today deciding whether to call off tomorrow’s scheduled space shuttle launch after a crack was found in the foam of Discovery’s external fuel tank.

NASA will launch its first space shuttle in almost a year on July 1, despite recommendations against a lift-off attempt by the space agency’s chief engineer and safety offices.

An Indian unmanned mission to the moon will carry two Nasa scientific devices designed to find minerals and ice on the lunar surface.

Brazil’s first man in space landed back on Earth in the freezing Kazakh steppe today after a nine-day visit to the international space station.

HOUSEHOLDERS must realise that burning 60,000 tonnes of rubbish illegally in backyards can have more deadly health effects than incineration, an Oireachtas Committee heard yesterday.

Householders must realise that burning rubbish illegally in backyards can have deadly health effects, an Oireachtas Committee heard today.

Nasa’s top official said today the future of US participation in Russian space flights was in doubt.

NASA unveiled plans yesterday to put man back on the moon by 2018, at a cost of more than €100 billion.

NASA hopes to return astronauts to the moon by 2018, nearly a half-century after men last walked the lunar surface, by using a distinctly retro combination of space shuttle and Apollo rocket parts.

DISCOVERY and its crew of seven glided safely back to Earth yesterday, ending a riveting, at times agonising, 14-day test of space shuttle safety that was shadowed by the ghosts of Columbia.

From the Johnson Space Centre in Texas to Capitol Hill in Washington DC, the relief was obvious when space shuttle Discovery safely returned to terra firma.

After orbiting the Earth for nearly two weeks, astronauts aboard space shuttle Discovery were told to circle the planet for another day as bad weather in Florida forced Nasa to delay today’s scheduled landing.

Nasa’s boss took the blame for the alarming loss of a big piece of fuel-tank insulation from Discovery, but refused to give up on flying another space shuttle later this year.

Discovery docked at the International Space Station today after performing an unprecedented back flip to allow those aboard the outpost to photograph the shuttle’s belly for signs of damage.

A fuel sensor system on Discovery’s external tank passed its first test early today as Nasa began fuelling the space shuttle for the first launch attempt since the doomed Columbia flight two and a half years ago.

Space shuttle Discovery’s seven astronauts arrived at the launch pad under a drizzle today and began boarding the spacecraft for the first such flight in two-and-a-half years, although thunderstorms threatened to force a postponement.

With a brief, but embarrassing setback behind them, Nasa crews began fuelling Discovery for lift-off later today on the first space shuttle flight in two-and-a-half years.

At a murder trial in the Central Criminal Court today a witness told that the victim had lived in fear of a gang called the "Morans".

RUBY WALSH was to the fore again at Punchestown yesterday when partnering the Martin Brassil-trained mare Barrack Buster to a convincing win in the Total Events Rental Hurdle.

A Florida activist with ties to anti-abortion violence again insisted he was innocent of molesting a 15-year-old girl from Northern Ireland as a judge sentenced him to more than 18 years in prison.