In a way, I miss Brian Cowen, or more accurately, the Cowen years.

IRISH blacksmiths have created nearly two dozen iron roses which will form part of a memorial to the 77 people killed in Norway by extremist Anders Behring Breivik.

EVERY hour they came in their hundreds, some of them in tears, to leave flowers, Norwegian flags or to light candles in memory of the dead.

Low-income families and those surviving on social welfare payments were today warned they face a hit in the upcoming Budget.

VOICING his disappointment and disapproval on the Joe Duffy radio show at the sale of rosary beads in the shop in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, Wallace Thompson of the Evangelical Protestant Society, Belfast, said “rosary beads have no place within Protestantism and ought not to be found, for sale or otherwise, in a Protestant church.”

A witness at the Central Criminal Court trial of a Dublin man accused of killing a 32-year-old father of two in North Dublin three years ago has denied that he acted as a vigilante on the night of the incident.

R&B star Bobby Brown has been confined to a wheelchair after twisting his ankle.

THE brutal killing of Robert McCartney by republicans in Belfast following a bar room brawl provoked an outcry that was heard all the way to the White House.

I OBJECT to the attack on President Mary McAleese by Dr Hazlett Lynch (Irish Examiner letters, February 4).

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell says Sinn Féin has dishonoured the Irish flag.

Discreet Brief can make her experience count by taking the Cliff Brants‘ Champagne Retirement EBF Maiden Fillies Stakes at Newmarket tomorrow.

The patience of the last three contestants in I’m A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here was stretched to breaking point today when they returned from the day’s trial to find their camp had been dismantled.