PART I: I once gave my heart to a woman from Waterford but all that remains of that love, decades later, is a lingering grá for her homeplace, writes Joe McNamee.

The underworld has always held a fascination for mankind. From the fabulous Cave of Swallows in Mexico featured on David Attenborough’s Planet Earth to the Lascaux Caves in France which has elaborate paintings of animals from 17,000 years ago.

Colin Stafford-Johnson is touring Irish venues with his incredible wildlife tales, writes Des O’Driscoll

IN the same way that Bordeaux is associated with fine wine, the name West Cork evokes the idea of wonderful food.

Your letters, your views...

Your letters, your views...

New Zealand has no native land mammals, apart from a few bats. 

Bill Linnane spends a spell on Speyside and discovers how Scottish distillers have a lot to teach the booming Irish whiskey trade.

Former Limerick mayor John Gilligan has welcomed a planned initiative by the International Federation for Human Rights to seek fundamental rights for deprived parts of the city.

Are GM foods the answer to world hunger or a danger to our health? Rita de Brun asks the experts on both sides.

Andy Serkis says his adaptation of 'The Jungle Book' doesn't "shy away from darkness".

Patrick Altes was aged just four when he arrived in Paris with his family. They had been displaced from their home as the 1962 Algerian War of Independence expelled its population of European colonists.

Our friends in the USA seem to have the impression that we in Ireland have a Garden of Eden with a coveted juicy taxless apple.

Superstitious about the number 13? You’re not alone, writes John Daly.

Cain

THE rustic poet Patrick Kavanagh put it lyrically when he wrote that “ordinary things wear lovely wings”.

THE restoration of an 18th century house, donated to the state in the 1980s, will be the largest single investment in any tourism project this year.

HOMER SIMPSON has debated with God on the merits of religion versus sport, been banished to hell and frolicked nude in the Garden of Eden.

P. Diddy bought his son a $360,000 (€254,000) car for his 16th birthday.

CARMEL SOMERS, owner of the iconic Good Things café in Durrus developed her love and appreciation of good food in her childhood “while surrounded by lavish roast dinners, meticulous baking and too much butter”.

P. Diddy spent $3m on his 40th birthday party.

A 16TH CENTURY painting deemed too racy by London Underground to advertise a groundbreaking exhibition by German Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder has made it back in time for the show’s opening on Saturday.

THE Roman Catholic Church has effectively buried the concept of limbo, the place where centuries of tradition and teaching held that babies who die without baptism went.

IRISH politics has resembled a magicians’ convention over the past 10 days. All the party heavyweights have been waving their magic wands to show how — hey presto! — they will make rival TDs disappear from the Dáil next year.

Milton’s Paradise Lost, one of English literature’s most famous works, is being turned into a Hollywood film.

THE old joke about Brian Cowen is that if he was in the Garden of Eden, he wouldn’t bite the apple of temptation but merely lick it. Caution has been Cowen’s watchword in every department he has run, despite his public image as a bristling bruiser.

IN recent months the level of violence in Iraq has increased with almost daily reports of bombings. Caught in the midst of the chaos are a small minority, the Christian Iraqis.

FEW of us can plead ignorance about the scandalous rate of pay and dire working conditions that many people in the third world endure, to provide us with the daily luxuries that so many of us now take for granted.

IN his recent very significant letter to the bishops of the Catholic church, which has been unfairly represented as a re-statement of traditionalism, Cardinal Ratzinger puts forward more questions than answers about the role of women in the church.

A fully grown tiger and an alligator found in a Manhattan apartment have been sedated by police marksmen and taken to wildlife sanctuaries after the flat occupier was savaged by the 28 stone cat.