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Taoiseach Bertie Ahern at yesterday's launch of Fianna Fáil's election campaign at its election headquarters in Dublin. Mr Ahern read out a statement to journalists at the press conference but, to the surprise of the media, he refused to answer any questions.
Handwritten Heaney drafts raise €27,000 for arts centre
Handwritten drafts of a Seamus Heaney poem fetched €27,000 at an auction on Saturday night to help fund a new arts and heritage centre in Ashford, Co Wicklow.
Ahern says voters have 'real choice' in election
The Taoiseach said yesterday that the Irish people had a real choice to make between two very different alternatives in the election, and no one could know what the outcome would be. He was speaking after asking President McAleese to dissolve the Dáil and call an election for Thursday, May 24th.Taoiseach's ex-partner was given £30,000stg by Wall
Businessman Michael Wall gave £30,000stg in cash to the Taoiseach's then partner Celia Larkin in December 1994, the Mahon tribunal has been told.
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Education
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Ireland
Majority of voters support nurses, poll shows
Almost two-thirds of voters support the claim by nurses for a 10 per cent pay rise and a 35-hour working week. pHanafin abandons plan for two-stage Leaving Cert
The Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, is set to abandon plans for a new two-stage Leaving Certificate, after school managers refused to back her proposals. pGRA wants co-ordinated road deaths crackdown
Gardaí are to press for a new adequately-funded Government initiative to tackle road deaths that would see members of the force working more closely with government departments and local authorities. pMother and children are laid to rest
They gripped each other for support at the graveside, a family
crippled by grief, at this the end of their longest and most
difficult of weeks. pIrish medicine prices 19% above EU average
Pharmaceutical products cost more in Ireland than in most EU states. p
Finance
An Post and Fortis bid for 5% of banking sector
An Post, the state postal service, will tomorrow launch a
banking operation that over the next five years aims to take 5 per
cent of the retail banking market. pIrish Life sues Barry & Sons over rent
One of the State's largest independent fashion retailers and distributors, Barry & Sons, is being sued by Irish Life for more than €119,000 over outstanding rent and service charges it claims it is owed relating to a store in Dublin's St Stephen's Green shopping centre. pRehab to focus on online gaming
Rehab's bingo website is generating revenue of some €1 million per month and the charity has plans to deploy hundreds of internet gaming kiosks across the country in an effort to further boost turnover. p
World
Blair, Brown unite in bid to avert disaster
BRITAIN: Tony Blair and Gordon Brown finally appear
to be pulling together ahead of Thursday's elections threatening
historic defeat for Labour in Scotland, coalition government in
Wales and the loss of hundreds of council seats in England. pTension rises in Basra as car bomb kills 5
IRAQ: A car bomb exploded in the southern city of Basra last night, killing five people and wounding 10, police said. p1m secular protesters take to the streets in Istanbul
TURKEY: A political crisis was looming in Turkey yesterday after pro-secular protesters flooded central Istanbul to demand the resignation of a government they fear is leading Turkey toward Islamic rule. p
Features
Music for the silent era
![Dave Douglas: 'I'm a jazz musician by education and vocation, but I don't think jazz should [dictate] what I want to do.' Photograph: Ashley Mitchell, Banff Centre](/newspaper/images/2007/0430/thumb/1177715673531_1.jpg?ts=1211004351 "Dave Douglas: 'I'm a jazz musician by education and vocation, but I don't think jazz should [dictate] what I want to do.' Photograph: Ashley Mitchell, Banff Centre")
Dave Douglas finds inspiration in the oddest places, such as the
work and tragic life of Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, writes
Ray Comiskey pLessons learned on the streets of New York
Willie Nile has spent 10 years in the musical wilderness, but now he's back with a new album and his inspiration is as strong as ever, he tells Tony Clayton-Lea p
Sport
Joy unconfined as drought ends
GAELIC GAMES: They had a hot time in the old town
last night. Strange that this long hot April should have put an end
to a long drought. On a parched but pretty pitch at Semple Stadium
yesterday Waterford, without a national title since 1963, seized
the Allianz National Hurling League. Joy was unconfined. The
hurling nation has a sudden thirst for what wonders might gush from
the pending summer. pKeane intent on making 'a mark'
SOCCER: Sunderland and Birmingham City both secured instant returns to the English Premiership yesterday due to Derby County's defeat at Crystal Palace and Sunderland, in the words of their manager Roy Keane, are now intent on making "a mark" in the top division of English football. p
Opinion
Choosing new kind of country
The platform for electoral success should be a fairer society for a fitter economy, writes Fintan O'Toole pPhone texts send wrong message
Texting is either, as the postmodernists so rudely insist, just another cultural shift in which things dropping off one end of the trailer are supplanted at the other, or a defining moment when mankind's cleverality starts to eat its own foundations. I tend towards the latter view, believing that all technology usurps human capacity in exchange for convenience, writes John Waters. p
