Dublin-based exploration firm Fastnet Oil and Gas is open to partaking in merger and acquisition activity, as part of the wave of consolidation expected to materialise in the international oil and gas sector in the next few years.

Tullow Oil’s management is hopeful the company will return to profit this year, after posting its first net loss for 15 years in 2014.

Tullow Oil is to significantly redistribute its short-term capital spend levels away from exploration and more towards the development and production of its already proven assets.

Fastnet Oil and Gas has said it is "very possible" it will expand its asset portfolio over the next 12 months, with it currently actively reviewing opportunities in eastern Africa.

Nine parties have expressed serious interest about investing in the Celtic Sea and onshore Moroccan assets of Irish exploration firm Fastnet Oil & Gas.

The World Health Organisation urged nations worldwide to help stop the spread of Ebola as it declared the outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency.

Net sales of Guinness declined 3% in Ireland over the past year, due to hot weather, significant rises in excise duties and the continuing shrinkage of the overall beer market here.

A fire on the slopes of Kenya’s tallest mountain is sending big game animals like elephants fleeing for their lives, as wildlife agents and British troops are fighting to put out several fires, officials said.

A huge fire on Kenya’s tallest mountain is stampeding big game animals down the slopes to safety.

THE United Nations Human Rights Council should accept responsibility, on behalf of the world forum, for the famine spreading through eastern Africa, and should call for member countries’ cooperation to overcome the desperate food crisis there, experts said.

MELANIE VERWOERD has been sacked as executive director of Unicef Ireland by email — despite recent praise from the board for her fundraising efforts.

Thailand has confiscated two tons of African elephant tusks worth millions of dollars being smuggled through a Bangkok port, in what authorities said was the country’s largest ivory seizure.

BREAST cancer rates are four times higher in Britain than in Eastern Africa, new figures show.

PEOPLE living in part Cork city’s northside got their taste buds really rolling when they were treated to traditional dishes from all over the world.

A Somali man was under heavy guard at a Danish hospital today after police stopped him from killing an artist whose cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed outraged the Muslim world.

Calls for a re-run of the Kenyan election whose result sparked days of deadly rioting were effectively dismissed by president Mwai Kibaki tonight.

A GROUP responsible for distributing €16 million this year to Irish organisations working in third world countries is under review by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

A “moderate” El Nino weather system has developed in the tropical Pacific Ocean and could create unusual and severe weather patterns around the world, the UN weather agency said today.

THE Government is gravely concerned at the humanitarian situation in Darfur, Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern said yesterday.

The Government is gravely concerned at the humanitarian situation in Darfur, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern said today.

WHAT’S being described as a “remarkable” response to a cuckoo survey underway in Clare, reflects a growing interest in nature and wildlife.

PRELIMINARY tests on fowl from a region south of Moscow where hundreds of birds died suddenly detected the H5N1 strain of bird flu, Russia’s Agriculture Ministry said yesterday.

MILLIONS of people living in Europe, Africa and Asia watched as the moon passed across the face of the sun, causing an annular eclipse in which only a fiery solar rim can be seen.

TO see Africa’s unrelenting hunger, look at the fevered eyes of 17 malnourished infants languishing in a west African hospital.

Swarms of desert locusts are moving east across Sudan, threatening to devastate crops in Ethiopia and Eritrea, a UN food agency said today.

A powerful earthquake rocked parts of Sulawesi in eastern Indonesia today, causing panic among residents, officials and media reports said. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

More than 70,000 people previously listed as missing in Indonesia are dead, the nation’s health ministry said, putting the worldwide tsunami death toll above 220,000 today, though the numbers still had to be confirmed.

Indonesia’s military asked aid groups in tsunami-stricken areas to draw up a list of relief workers and report on their movements as fears rose for the security of foreigners helping survivors in a region wracked by rebellion long before the waves hit.

Pope John Paul II will hold a New Year’s midnight Mass in his private chapel for the victims of the tsunamis that have devastated Asia, his office said today.

Normally, earthquakes affect a specific area, but the earthquake off Sumatra sent tsunami across five times zones, doing enormous damage to 12 different countries ranging from Thailand in southeast Asia to eastern Africa.

TWO fisherman are missing off the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean and four locals were admitted to hospital after being injured following flooding caused by the quake.

Two fisherman are missing off the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean and four locals were admitted to hospital after being injured following flooding caused by the quake-created wave.

Oil and gas company Aminex has agreed terms with Australian energy company Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to work together on exploration projects in eastern Africa.

The first Olympic competitor cheat was thrown out of Athens last night as the IOC’s more rigorous testing policy began to bite.

NEARLY a billion dollars was spent fighting Africa’s AIDS war in 2002, almost twice as much as two years earlier, according to the agency UNAIDS.

Sweden closed its embassy in Kenya today amid threats of terrorism and moved operations to the ambassador’s home.

On a day many thought they would never see, Kenyans headed to the polls today to determine who will succeed President Daniel arap Moi – the leader of the East African nation for the past 24 years and one of Africa’s few remaining “big men”.