After massive success with The Gloaming, Iarla Ó Lionáird returns to Cork for a new project with the Vanbrugh Quartet, writes Ed Power

Racial tensions erupted today into running battles between police and thousands of white youths, many chanting racial slurs against ethnic Middle Easterners, at a beachside suburb in southern Sydney.

The family of an Australian engineer being held hostage in Iraq offered a “donation” to the Iraqi people today, as Australia’s top Muslim cleric left for Baghdad in a last-ditch effort to win his release.