ENGLAND:

Two special council meetings have been scheduled for today to strip Toronto’s crack-smoking mayor of his powers after explosive new allegations surfaced that he also snorted cocaine and partied with a possible prostitute.

Suspected Islamic extremists attacked an agricultural college in the dead of night, gunning down dozens of students as they slept in dormitories and torching classrooms in an ongoing Islamic uprising in north-east Nigeria, the school’s provost said.

The funeral mass for Seamus Heaney will take place on Monday at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Donnybrook, south Dublin followed by burial in his birthplace of Bellaghy, Co Derry.

Professor Patrick Prendergast has been elected Provost of Trinity College Dublin.

HOPES grew for three Irish families that their loved ones’ final resting place will be traced after wreckage thought to be from the missing Air France plane was spotted in seas off the coast of northern Brazil.

Families of two young Irish doctors on board the Air France airliner that vanished over the Atlantic spoke today of their heartbreak at the loss of their daughters.

EDUCATION Minister Batt O’Keeffe has urged high-earning third-level academics and managers to take the pay cuts already being offered by senior civil servants after it emerged 50 university bosses were paid €10 million last year.

TAOISEACH Brian Cowen will give the Government’s backing today to a controversial research collaboration between two universities which has already created major divisions within the third-level sector.

Two clergymen who witnessed the decommissioning of IRA weapons will be honoured for their role in the key chapter of the peace process, it was announced today.

They said Epsom had never staged scenes like when the entire Royal Ascot Racing Club descended upon the winner’s enclosure to welcome in Motivator two years ago.

Tornadoes swept through portions of the Midwestern United States, killing at least three people in Missouri and blowing roofs off homes in Illinois and Arkansas.

TRINITY College Dublin (TCD) is to appoint a permanent representative in India this summer to help attract more of the country’s students to study there.

Irish students will be able to study in some of India’s top universities under a series of agreements signed in the Asian country today.