We are at mid-summer point now and the sunshine, up to now, has been rather absent.

Now that we are properly into 2016, I have had some further thoughts on wine experiences I enjoyed last year.

May seems to have become food and wine festival month. This weekend it is Wexford’s turn with a craft beer trail in the town tomorrow. Greenacres wine shop will be hosting wine tastings Saturday and Sunday.

Now that there appears be a chink of light at the end of the recession tunnel — given the number of new wine shop and wine bar openings — I thought I would talk gadgets this week.

ALTHOUGH increasing numbers of us buy our wine at the supermarkets, this week I want to encourage you to remember the independent wine shops who can often provide more variety and unusual styles.

Seven scientists and other experts went on trial on manslaughter charges today for allegedly failing to sufficiently warn residents before a devastating earthquake that killed more than 300 people in central Italy in 2009.

US preacher Harold Camping is again preaching the world is about to end. After miscalculating in 1994, this time around, he’s predicting Doomsday for tea time next Saturday.

Pope Benedict XVI has urged G8 leaders meeting next week in central Italy to rewrite global financial rules and defend the world’s poor from the effects of the economic downturn.

CRIMINALS are increasingly using football for money laundering and tax evasion, helped by the globalisation of the sport and financial needs of clubs, an anti-corruption body said yesterday.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi today announced that 207 people died in the powerful quake that devastated part of central Italy, and 15 more are missing.

A powerful earthquake ripped through central Italy today killing more than 90 people as they slept.

A medical examiner has testified that a British student killed in central Italy was attacked by more than one person, in the trial of an American suspect and her former boyfriend.

Europe has accelerated its efforts to combat bird flu as Italy called for EU aid for affected fowl raisers, Germany ordered a limited cull of poultry and France grappled with its first case of the lethal H5N1 strain confirmed in a wild duck.