There has been a more than 500% increase in only five years in the number of people who have been hit with penalties for not engaging with the Government’s job activation services.

Ron Moody, who will forever be associated with the role of Fagin in Oliver!, was on his way to becoming a sociologist when he fell into acting.

Nobody epitomised Waterford hurling’s move from artistry to artisan more than Stephen Molumphy. As the county team under Derek McGrath embrace an order of discipline and style, it’s ironic that the 31-year-old has retired but life finally got in the way

THE bumbling Mr Bumble in Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist declared the law to be an ‘ass’. He wasn’t, of course, reflecting on Ireland’s inheritance laws but the comment is prescient in light of the fact that wife-killer Eamonn Lillis emerges from prison today a wealthy man.

Ender’s Game (12A)

Artful

Home, 8pm. My husband and I are sitting in the conservatory.

Feta cheese, Swiss funds, and Greek business. A different type of Eurovision contest was under way yesterday with the yes and no sides throwing all sorts of ingredients into the EU treaty debate while singing from different hymn sheets.

WHEN Professor Fan Hong returned to China after studying abroad, she stopped in the neighbourhood where she thought she had lived and wondered where her home had gone.

A pet cat regularly travels on his local bus and sometimes racks up 10-mile round trips.

WHEN Roberto Mancini, the Manchester City manager, looks across to David Moyes, his Everton counterpart this evening in the opposite dugout, do not bet against the duo casting envious glances at each other.

British car giant Jaguar Land Rover is to close one of its UK plants in changes outlined to workers today.

Michael Jackson genetically engineered his children, it has been claimed today.

FORMER child acting star Mark Lester has said in a British newspaper that he donated sperm to Michael Jackson and believes he could be the biological father of the late singer’s daughter, Paris.

Former child star Mark Lester revealed today that he donated sperm to Michael Jackson and believes he could be the biological father of the late King of Pop’s daughter Paris.

Police in London today smashed a modern-day “Fagin’s gang” who forced young children into a life of crime.

Somehow this screen version of the Cornelia Funke fantasy doesn't quite translate, largely because almost everything about it is poor.

Roman Polanski has found the young lead for his next film, Oliver Twist, based on Charles Dickens’ classic novel.

THINK of history’s great superpowers: The British Empire, the United States, the Soviet Union, the GAA. Now, think of the superpowers in rugby: New Zealand, South Africa, the current England side and, for over a decade from the late 1960s on, Wales.