This year’s Team Hope Christmas Shoebox Appeal is aiming to deliver 200,000 shoeboxes full of gifts to needy children from Africa to Eastern Europe.

Celebrity Bainisteoir — The Rivals

Thousands of VIPs, including some 120 national leaders, will jet into London for Friday’s Olympic opening ceremony, with guests ranging from Angelina Jolie and Michelle Obama to the king of Swaziland.

Ireland is one of the world's most inactive nations; a new global study reveals we're the seventh worst country for lack of exercise among 36 nations.

Richard E Grant was given just four days to get ready for his part in a new TV drama, writes Pádraic Killeen

Five children around the world die every minute because of chronic malnutrition, according to a report that also said almost half a billion children are at risk of permanent damage over the next 15 years.

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

Guy Richie and Joss stone are on the guest list for Britain's royal wedding.

Tottenham have completed the transfer of Bongani Khumalo from South African side Supersport United on a four-and-a-half year deal.

A CORK mother-of-four who sponsors several African children has urged parents to support a special charity appeal to recruit 500 child sponsors and help transform an African community.

THE power of positive thinking is to be used in a project to see if improving the nation’s mental health and saving lives from being lost to suicide can be achieved by spreading the message to children in primary schools.

Zimbabwe’s neighbours will hold a summit to try to resolve the southern African nation’s power-sharing impasse.

Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will attend a summit in Harare next week aimed at saving an agreement to form a unity government with President Robert Mugabe, a spokesman said yesterday.

Irish people will donate up to 300,000 boxes of Christmas toys in coming weeks to ensure Santa doesn't forget poor children abroad.

THAILAND’S revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej is the world’s richest royal, according to a Forbes magazine list, dominated by Middle Eastern monarchs riding high on surging oil prices.

Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe was sworn in for a sixth term today, just hours after officials announced that he had overwhelmingly won an election many countries have condemned as a sham. His main rival dismissed the inauguration and said the next step would be power-sharing talks.

SURELY world leaders will not be stupid enough to turn the global food trade on its head at a time when high prices are threatening hunger in the world’s poorest countries.

The European Union has come under fire from a charity over deals which allow developing countries to sell their wares in Europe duty-free.

Two airlines banned from the EU over safety fears have been reinstated.

Irish people are expected to collect up to 300,000 boxes of Christmas toys for needy children abroad in coming weeks.

After 10 years of having Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley flying their flag, Irish hopes in golf’s World Cup rest this week with two players ranked 583rd and 622nd in the world.

Southern African leaders meeting this week were likely to be preoccupied with the economic and political crises in Zimbabwe that are sending thousands of refugees into neighbouring South Africa, Botswana and Zambia.

Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.

Fires that have swept through parts of South Africa in recent days have killed at least 18 people and damaged power lines, crops, forests and grazing areas.

AIDS experts have called for a mass circumcision programme in South Africa, condemning a “deafening silence” from policy makers since studies revealed it sharply cut infection rates.

Zimbabwe’s neighbours are under increasing pressure to do something about its chaos – in part because it is already spilling over in the form of migrants fleeing economic collapse and political clampdown.

Despite progress in preventing HIV transmission from pregnant mothers to their babies, more than a thousand children around the world were infected with the disease each day in 2006, according to a UN report.

Something of a personal testimony from debut director Grant since this interesting tale is set in late l960s Swaziland at the time of independence and mirrors the English actor’s own boyhood in Africa.

THE global battle against HIV/Aids shows no sign of letting up a quarter-century into an epidemic that has claimed 25 million lives, the head of the UN’s HIV/AIDSjoint programme warned yesterday.

Cast members are expected to join actor Richard E Grant today for the charity premiere of his semi-autobiographical film, Wah-Wah.

South African activists today tried to blockade the country’s borders with Swaziland to protest against the lack of democracy in the continent’s last absolute monarchy.

MORE than 300 “flying coffins” are to be banned by the EU from tomorrow in a new get-tough measure on unsafe airplanes.

The European Union today banned 93, mostly African-based airlines from landing at European airports, declaring them unsafe as part of a new Brussels blacklist of airlines that fail to meet international safety standards.

ALMOST five million people were infected by HIV globally in 2005, the highest jump since the first reported case in 1981 and taking the number living with the virus to a record 40.3 million, the United Nations said yesterday.

INTERNATIONAL governments need to give emergency aid to southern Africa, which is facing the biggest famine in the world, it was claimed yesterday.

International governments need to give emergency aid to southern Africa which is facing the biggest famine in the world, it was claimed today.

Up to 10 million people in southern Africa face severe food shortages brought on by drought and HIV/Aids because wealthy nations are failing to heed the lessons of Niger’s crisis, Oxfam warned today.

Irish actor Liam Neeson today pledged to highlight the plight of tens of thousands of children orphaned by AIDS and HIV after an inspiring trip to stricken Mozambique.

Big screen star Richard E Grant confessed to being "slightly constipated, terrified, exuberant and exhilarated" at the prospect of opening the 59th Edinburgh International Film Festival tonight with his directorial debut.

KIEREN FALLON, suffering from a sore neck, missed Cork yesterday and was replaced aboard Beauty Bright in the opening Coolmore Stud Choisir EBF Maiden by Ballydoyle apprentice, Sean Levey.

Gabriel Byrne will be at the Edinburgh Film Festival opening next month of Richard E. Grant's directing debut, Wah-Wah, about a family living in 1960s Swaziland.

More than 10 million people in six southern African countries are in urgent need of food and other help after another year of erratic rainfall, UN agencies and the Southern African Development Community said.

More than 10 million people in six southern African countries are in urgent need of food and other help after another year of erratic rainfall, UN agencies and the Southern African Development Community said today.