It’s surely a no-brainer to give the on-course bookmakers what they want and help keep them on life support for as long as possible.

It has become an all-too-familiar refrain now but we remain in some sort of limbo until we get a serious drop of rain. It’s good, good-to-yielding ground, there are people mowing lawns, midges flying around – there’s nothing Januaryesque about it, writes Ruby Walsh.

BURMA needs at least €630 million ($1 billion) over the next three years to put the survivors of Cyclone Nargis back on their feet, a UN-led report said yesterday in the first comprehensive assessment of damage caused by the disaster that killed more than 84,000 people.