If Catholics visit Lourdes and Muslims make pilgrimage to Mecca, then football fans must go see Messi, writes Tommy Martin.

Shakhtar Donetsk came from behind to beat Roma 2-1 in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 clash in Kharkiv.

Roma striker Edin Dzeko is hoping his side can catch Champions League opponents Shakhtar Donetsk cold in their quarter-final tie tonight.

Manchester City slumped to their first defeat of the season with a 2-1 loss to Shakhtar Donetsk in their final Champions League Group F game.

Manchester City slumped to their first defeat of the season with a 2-1 loss to Shakhtar Donetsk in their final Champions League Group F game.

Toure has featured little this season but has been impressed by the performances of his team-mates.

Raheem Sterling hit a late winner as an unusually subdued Manchester City secured top spot in their Champions League group with a narrow victory over Feyenoord.

Bernard Dunne, the Irish Athletic Boxing Association’s high-performance director, is unperturbed about a supposed talent drain from Irish boxing. Instead, he insists a fresh team are already on course for great things, writes Brendan O’Brien.

Paulo Fonseca admits his Shakhtar Donetsk side face a daunting task to contain Manchester City.

Dean Gardiner comes across as the kind of guy who greets triumph and disaster with much the same shrug of the shoulders.

Westmeath southpaw Joe Ward is on course for his third European title in Kharkiv, Ukraine, but Antrim’s Brendan Irvine and Kurt Walker had to settle for bronze after losing their semi-finals yesterday.

Irish boxing could surpass its remarkable record at the last five European Championships in Kharkiv, Ukraine this weekend.

Sean McComb is putting his trust in Irish head coach Zaur Antia and team after sensationally beating Russia’s World Elite light-welter champion Vitaly Dunaystev to qualify for the World Championships from the European Championships in Kharkiv, Ukraine yesterday.

Irish Athletic Boxing Association officials were last night locked in talks at the National Stadium in an attempt to cease the organisation’s much-publicised civil war.

The secretary of the Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA) has resigned amid a deepening boardroom crisis within the organisation.

Punches were finally thrown in the ring at the National Stadium last night as a mooted box-off to decide Ireland’s super-heavyweight representative at next month’s European Championships resulted in a split-decision victory for Dean Gardiner.

Earlier this week, a box-off to decide Ireland’s super-heavyweight representative for next month’s European Championships was mooted to take place this evening. Instead of that fight taking centre stage, Irish boxing has been hit by yet another crisis — one which could last a far longer distance than the three rounds originally expected to be contested between Martin Keenan and Dean Gardiner at the National Stadium.

Chernobyl crusaders Adi Roche and Ali Hewson are taking several core donors who helped sustain their charity during the recession on a fact-finding mission to the nuclear disaster-affected region today.

Policeman and demonstrator die after explosion at memorial rally

Ten people have been injured in an explosion at a march in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

Cardiac surgeons have thanked the people of Ireland for funding lifesaving surgery on children living close to the frontline of Ukraine’s bitter civil war.

At least five people have died after heavy shelling in rebel stronghold Donetsk in eastern Ukraine damaged a hospital, six schools and five nursery schools.

Adi Roche reports on how the generosity of Irish people is helping to save the lives of seriously ill children in Eastern Ukraine, including Baby Maxim, who will undergo surgery

A senior cardiologist at the General Hospital in Kharkiv, Eastern Ukraine has made a desperate video appeal to the Irish people this Christmas for help to fund and extend life-saving heart surgeries on children in the region.

More human remains have been discovered at the MH17 crash site in rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine.

Russian military vehicles crossed into Ukraine during the night, according to Nato and Ukraine, and the Ukrainian president said most of them were quickly destroyed by his troops.

The Dutch public stood and applauded respectfully yesterday as they watched 40 hearses carrying the coffins of those who died in the doomed Malaysia Airlines MH17 pass by.

Dutch air safety officials leading the investigation into the MH17 disaster have still not got safe access to the crash site in eastern Ukraine.

Bodies of the dead from the downed Malaysia Airlines plane have arrived in Holland to be received by a nation in mourning.

Black box flight recorders from the downed Air Malaysian plane have arrived for analysis by UK crash investigators.

The king and queen of the Netherlands will lead mourners as the first victims of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 disaster are repatriated from the Ukraine today.

A train bearing the bodies of the people who died in the Malaysia Airlines crash has arrived in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, on their way to the Netherlands.

Bowing to international pressure, pro-Moscow separatists released a train packed with bodies and handed over the black boxes from the downed Malaysia Airlines plane.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak says that the leader of the pro-Russian rebels has agreed to hand over both black boxes from Flight 17 to Malaysian investigators who are in Ukraine.

Dutch forensic investigators told armed separatists guarding train cars full of bodies from the downed Malaysia Airlines jet that the train must be allowed to leave within hours.

Another 21 bodies have been found in the sprawling fields of east Ukraine where Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was downed last week, killing all 298 people on board.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has laid out what he called overwhelming evidence of Russian complicity in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 and called rebels’ behaviour "grotesque".

Rebels have recovered the black boxes from downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and will hand them over to the International Civil Aviation Organisation, a rebel leader said yesterday.

US and European leaders have called for international investigators to be given full access to the downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crash site after rebels in eastern Ukraine took control of the recovered bodies.

He was born into turmoil in strife-torn Ukraine with a defective heart but, thanks to the skills of an Irish-funded surgical team, nine-day-old Miroslava is off the critical list.

Sustained gunfire was heard throughout the night near the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk, the stronghold of pro-Russia fighters, ahead of a second round of European-brokered talks today aimed at resolving the crisis.