According to a report in Science News, Europe’s oldest living thing is a tree growing in the Pindus Mountains of Northern Greece.

Irving Oil, the soon-to-be new owner of Whitegate oil refinery, is not concerned by the facility’s weak financial performance and is confident of turning a profit despite global refining margins coming under pressure.

The new owners of the country’s only oil refinery, Whitegate, Co Cork, have confirmed it is their “full intention” to run the facility as an operating refinery over the long-term and maintain its entire workforce of close to 300 employees.

Marketing software company HubSpot wants to create a business with “strong Dublin roots” after adding 320 new employees to its Irish workforce and moving into its new office space in the capital’s thriving Silicon Docks.

Trainer Art Sherman feels California Chrome is at the peak of his powers ahead of his bid for glory in today’s Dubai World Cup.

Jason Lee's lawyer failed Wednesday to bring a missing witness charge against the prosecution based on a social media page belonging to the alleged victim's brother.

Barry Geraghty’s hopes of making the Punchestown Festival rest on a meeting with his surgeon in four weeks’ time.

The Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots could produce one of the greatest Super Bowls of all time tomorrow night but the real winner may be debated for decades given the "deflategate" scandal hanging over the game.

A sanitised presentation of conflict on TV screens, and the use of unmanned drones to carry out attacks, leaves many people unaware of the full horror of war, writes Dan Buckley

Japan’s SoftBank Corp is in talks to acquire DreamWorks Animation, the Hollywood studio behind the Shrek and Madagascar movie hits, a person with knowledge of the situation said.

Bono and Rihanna had front-row seats as his wife’s ethical fashion range Edun unveiled its spring collection at New York Fashion Week.

This year the world looks back and remembers the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. The scale of human slaughter achieved nothing except to sow the seeds of the Second World War.

A toddler who survived an 11-storey fall from a tower block in the US has been dubbed "the miracle baby".

A young American boy who survived an 11-storey fall from a tower block has been dubbed “the miracle baby” and is recovering in hospital.

Trainer Art Sherman secured his place in the record books as he sent out California Chrome to land the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on Saturday night.

Dallas Buyers Club *****

Reviews and trailers of the new movies in Irish cinemas this weekend in one handy place.

New York takes all the credit, talking a big game and laying on the hottest Super Bowl bashes.

It’s almost impossible to recall past controversies without wondering how much the Twitter prism would have stirred things up even more.

It’s rare that the two best teams in the NFL make it through to the Super Bowl.

A 20-year-old victim of a gun attack in west Dublin on Thursday night might not walk again.

A marketing software provider will create 150 jobs when it opens its European headquarters in Dublin, it was announced today.

A student who was left handcuffed and forgotten in a tiny holding cell for four days is suing US authorities for $20m (€15m).

Katie Taylor will make her first appearance in Cork tomorrow night in her penultimate bout in Ireland before she jets off for the 2012 World Championships in Qinhuangdao, China, where she’ll be hoping to qualify for the 2012 London Olympics.

The Conversations exhibition at IMMA reflects on the relationship between photographers and their subjects, Carl Dixon reports.

Tens of billions of dollars will be at stake when BP heads to a US court this month to determine how much it owes for the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill and how much it can shift to subcontractors.

Robert Downey Jr has signed to star as Mr Peabody in a new animated feature.

LAST week on this page Damien Enright described the magnificent trees on the neglected estate at Kincragie, near where he lives in Co Cork.

A STUNNING exhibition of haunting century-old images of American immigrants opened in Cork last night.

Vincent Sherman, who directed – and romanced – Bette Davis, Rita Hayworth and Joan Crawford during his heyday as a leading Hollywood filmmaker in the US in the 1940s and ’50s, has died. He would have been 100 on July 16.

Police in Pennsylvania are searching for an 18-year-old man and his girlfriend after her parents were found shot dead in their home.

A large consignment of fake designer clothing has been seized in Co Dublin.

France 41 United States 14

A 12-year-old New York girl, who was among the first to be sued by the record industry for sharing music over the Internet, is off the hook after her mother agreed to pay $1,900 (€1,700) to settle the lawsuit.

A 71-year-old grandfather is among more than 250 Americans being sued by the music industry for downloading copyright music from the internet.

HUNDREDS of people demonstrated in Liberia’s capital yesterday in an unprecedented show of opposition to President Charles Taylor, a day after President Bush told him to leave the country.

The US music industry was today stepping up its fight against Internet piracy by threatening legal action against hundreds of individual computer users who illegally share music files online.

A sick 17-year-old goldfish can swim again, thanks to a bunch of do-gooding humans.

ONE of the odd facts of life, which for obvious reasons gets left out of management courses, is that when a number of women work closely together, over a period of time their menstrual cycles tend to coincide.

Kennedy nephew Michael Skakel was jailed for 20 years to life today for murdering the girl next door in 1975 when they were 15-year-old neighbours.

A San Francisco court has allowed Napster to resume its song-swapping operations on the Internet.