A string of top awards at last week’s Discover Ireland Dublin Horse Show pointed to a revival of sport horse breeding in Munster.

HERE we go again: another Sunday, another Qatari takeover story, this time in the News Of The World, and rather better sourced than you might imagine.

DO YOU find watching the news depressing? I completely understand. What with Al Gore telling us that we face a “planetary emergency” and the British government claiming obesity presents an even bigger challenge, not to mention the serial warnings that we are all going to be blown up by Islamist terrorists, if cancer doesn’t kill us beforehand.

YOU’RE AWAKE. Barely. You now have hours left to snag a last-second winner with a sports gift for the special person in your life. Let Michael Moynihan take you by the hand.

THE old joke about Brian Cowen is that if he was in the Garden of Eden, he wouldn’t bite the apple of temptation but merely lick it. Caution has been Cowen’s watchword in every department he has run, despite his public image as a bristling bruiser.

Actor Patrick Stewart is to appear in the West End in a one-man production of A Christmas Carol, it was announced today.

IF MENDING fences was Clive Woodward's plan, he used the wrong hammer.

MY father is of a generation old enough to have regaled us spoilt city brats with ‘béal bocht’ stories about having to walk to school in bare feet carrying hot potatoes to keep his hands warm.