Update 4.25pm: Italian transport minister Graziano Delrio has announced an official inquiry into the accident.

Smog has helped put a damper on New Year’s Eve celebrations throughout Italy, as Rome, Milan and other cities ban fireworks to avoid aggravating already high levels of air pollution.

Italy coach Antonio Conte is among 104 people whom a prosecutor has requested be brought to trial under match-fixing charges in a wide-ranging case that allegedly has its roots in Singapore.

A Peugeot 208 has just set a new long-distance fuel economy record, travelling 1,337.19 miles using 43 litres of fuel; an amazing return of 141.2mpg.

Can there possibly be a more mouth-watering prospect in the whole of the 2015 football calendar than Barcelona v Bayern Munich at the Camp Nou tonight?

Ireland will see a 6-7% rise in visitor numbers next year, but could enjoy greater returns from tourism with more competitive airport charges, said Fáilte Ireland chairman Michael Cawley.

TRAVEL and how we experience that longed-for getaway, be it in the sun, snow, wilderness or a city break, changes faster than those enticing last-minute holiday package offers posted in your local travel agency shopfront.

AUSTRALIA: A long-running war of words between an Australian and the official Scrabble body has finally been declared a draw by a state court.

Fierce heat from a slow-burning blaze kept firefighters and other investigators from searching the hold and vehicle decks of a Greek ferry for more bodies for a second day.

Firefighters have boarded the charred Norman Atlantic ferry in the Italian port of Brindisi to put out residual fires and allow a search for more possible victims.

A cargo ship believed to be carrying hundreds of migrants has turned towards Italy, brushing off Greek authorities responding to a distress call from one of its passengers.

Prosecutors in Italy say they fear more bodies will be found aboard the crippled Greek ferry Norman Atlantic, adrift for a third day after a fire broke out on a car deck, with 10 people killed in the ensuing chaos.

Two crew members on an Albanian tugboat have died during the operation to secure the fire-hit Greek ferry from which hundreds of people were rescued and 10 people died, Albanian authorities said.

‘We experienced the Titanic — the only thing was we didn’t sink’.

The death toll in the Greek ferry fire has risen to 10 and rescuers are checking to see if anyone else might still be missing.

The death toll in the Greek ferry fire has risen to eight and rescuers are checking to see if anyone else might still be missing.

The evacuation of the Greek ferry that caught fire off Albania has been completed, officials say, and only the vessel’s captain and four Italian sailors remain on board to assist in the operation.

A cargo ship carrying 49 people evacuated from a Greek ferry which caught fire in the Adriatic Sea have arrived in the Italian port of Bari, the first big group to reach land.

New Italy coach Antonio Conte says he will lay down the law, vowing to "show no mercy" as he looks to build a successful team.

Long transfers from stages at Grand Tours are nothing strange in the world of cycling but Sunday’s mammoth journey from Dublin to Bari was one of the longest — and logistically difficult — in the race’s recent history.

Marcel Kittel, the winner of successive stages in Belfast and Dublin, has today abandoned the Giro d’Italia before the resumption in Italy due to illness.

German powerhouse Marcel Kittel proved for the second day in succession he is currently the best sprinter in the world when he stormed to victory on stage three of the Giro d’Italia in front of over 50,000 fans in Dublin’s city centre yesterday.

How to replace the irreplaceable?

Need inspiration for your holidays in 2014? From city breaks to family getaways to adventure destinations, Isabel Conway has 10 of the best at home and abroad.

More than 20m visitors have passed through Ireland’s busiest airport this year — the first time the landmark level has been reached since 2009.

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Ryanair has been accused of snubbing Cork Airport during its one million passenger growth strategy triggered by the scrapping of the €3 travel tax in the budget.

Ryanair is to open nine new routes from Dublin and increase frequencies on eight existing routes, the airline announced today.

Depart 19 Apr 2014

A psychiatrist has died after being stabbed 40 times by one of her patients during an appointment at a public health facility in Italy, investigators said.

Emergency workers in southern Italy are removing the wreckage of a tour bus which plunged off a highway killing at least 38 people.

Italy defender Ignazio Abate is wary of England’s wide boys ahead of Sunday’s European Championship quarter-final.

Three bodies have been found in the rubble of a collapsed building in southern Italy, the news agency ANSA said.

A family of three is missing after an explosion wrecked a residential building in southern Italy.

Find out some more about the decisive who could make or break dreams.

Sheamus had the belt and an entire nation’s talent for spoofery was finally rewarded.

We know Trapattoni believes that class is permanent and form has nothing to do with it, but it must be hard for Noel Hunt to think that he is probably the most in-form Irish striker at the moment and yet has no chance of going to the Euros.

THE cameras inside the Palace of Arts caught a rueful smile from Giovanni Trapattoni as Ireland’s European Championship destiny was unveiled in Kiev yesterday.

NOW this is the kind of Eurozone contagion we can all handle.

KEITH ANDREWS, man of the match and scorer of that all important first goal in Tallinn on Friday, has revealed that the mood in the Irish camp afterwards bordered on the surreal.