The identity of a couple apparently rowing in the hotel where honeymooner Michaela McAreavey was strangled is no longer an issue in the trial of two men accused of her murder, the judge has told jurors.

A new commercial starring Ashton Kutcher has been pulled from American airwaves amid claims of racism.

An online ad featuring Ashton Kutcher as an Indian man has been pulled off-line after viewers called it racist.

TWO things are hard to find in Connemara. The first is a reliable weather forecast.

Natacha Appanah

Not enough is being done to save elephants that get caught up in conflicts with Indian villages, conservationists have warned today.

ON February 22, 2007, a Cork man met two arms dealers in a London warehouse — everyone at the meeting stripping naked to show that they were not wearing wires or any electronic surveillance devices.

Two men were put on trial in Cork today for engaging in a conspiracy to acquire rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs to further a "war" in Limerick.

Simon Cowell hits out at the pushy parents of an X Factor contestant on tomorrow night’s show.

Celebrity Big Brother star Shilpa Shetty has hit out at “wild accusations” that she helped ruin another woman’s marriage.

PAKISTAN’S Supreme Court yesterday ordered a couple to be released from prison after a lower court ruled the husband was a woman and said their same-sex marriage was against Islam.

Pakistan’s first publicly acknowledged same-sex couple were today jailed for three years for perjury.

A Pakistani judge today warned two women, one of whom has had sex reassignment surgery, that they risked charges of committing an act of unnatural lust and that their marriage was against both the law and Islam.

An Indian woman who lost her four children in last year’s tsunami has given birth to a baby girl after doctors reversed her sterilisation.

THE spectre of babies being created for “spare parts” was brought closer yesterday, as the British House of Lords declared “designer babies” can be used to treat siblings with genetic disorders.

ONE of the first West Cork hobby farms, where pedigree cows wore coats in winter, is new to the market with the equally new auctioneering firm of Neill Clarke and Co.

The British fertility watchdog may have to relax its rules on “designer babies” because of mounting pressure from doctors and parents, a leading specialist said today.

A further six British couples want permission to create a ‘‘designer baby’’ following a ruling by Britain’s fertility watchdog.