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The Republic of Ireland and the EU have agreed a financial rescue package, Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen confirms.
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Britain has offered to make a direct bilateral loan to the Irish Republic as well as contributing to EU and IMF loans, it has been revealed.
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The latest Harry Potter film looks set to smash UK cinema box office records, Warner Bros says.
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World number two Roger Federer takes on Spain’s David Ferrer in the second match of the ATP World Tour Finals in London.
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Manchester City produce one of their most impressive performances of the season to sweep aside Fulham and return to the Premier League’s top four.
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Progress is the group’s fifth number one studio album Take That’s new album Progress has topped the UK chart, achieving the biggest opening week sales of any record for 13 years.
The Official Charts Company said it sold almost 520,000 albums – more than the rest of the top 10 put together.
It is the band’s first album since reuniting with Robbie Williams.
The last album to exceed sales of 500,000 copies was Oasis’s Be Here Now, which sold 663,000 in its first chart week in 1997.
Progress is the group’s fifth number one studio album out of the six they have released.
Their 2006 reunion album, Beautiful World, sold 2.5 million copies in the UK and clung to the number one spot for eight weeks.
In 2008, The Circus sold one million copies in just 18 days. To date it is nearing sales of 2.2 million.
Progress was one of five new albums to enter the top 10 this week, with Rihanna’s Loud coming in at number two.
Money raised from sales of JLS’s love You More will go to Children in Need Susan Boyle fell two places to three with The Gift, while violinist Andre Rieu’s Moonlight Serenade – an album of waltz tunes – entered the chart at four.
Greatest Hit’s So Far by Pink came in just behind at five and Bruce Springsteen’s latest album, The Promise, entered at seven.
Meanwhile, in the singles chart, X Factor runners-up JLS went straight in at number one with their Children In Need charity single, Love You More.
Take That remained at two with The Flood while Ellie Goulding’s version of Elton John’s Your Song leapt up the chart 36 places from 39 to three. The song is currently being used in a television advert campaign for a department store.
Last week’s number one Rihanna fell three places to four with Only Girl and Katy Perry rounded out the top five with Firework.
The only other new entry in the top 10 was Westlife with Safe coming in at 10.
And after Beatles back catalogue was finally made available via iTunes after years of negotiations, Hey Jude made a re-appearance on the chart, just enterting at number 40.
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The Vatican has long opposed the use of condoms as a form of contraception The Vatican has played down the importance of Pope Benedict’s remarks appearing to temper the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church to condoms.
The Vatican spokesman said the pontiff’s comments were not “revolutionary”, but added it was the first time Pope Benedict had commented on the issue informally.
The Pope made clear in his view condoms were no answer to the Aids pandemic.
But he said their use could sometimes be justified in exceptional cases.
Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi said the Pope was speaking about “an exceptional situation” in one of the interviews in the book Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times, which is being published on Tuesday.
“The Pope considered an exceptional situation in which the exercise of sexuality is a real danger to the life of another,” said Fr Lombardi.
Benedict used the specific example of a male prostitute using a condom to illustrate his apparent shift in position.
“The Pope maintains that condom use to lessen the danger of infection is a ‘first assumption of responsibility,'” said Fr Lombardi, quoting from the book.
“In this, the reasoning of the Pope certainly cannot be defined as a revolutionary breakthrough.”
“It is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection”
Pope BenedictExcerpt: The Pope on condomsHave your say
The Vatican has long opposed condoms as an artificial form of contraception.
This had drawn heavy criticism, particularly from Aids campaigners, who said condoms were one of the few methods proven to stop the spread of HIV.
The head of the United Nations Aids agency, Michael Sidibe, said the Pope’s words were a significant step forward.
They were also welcomed by the Save the Children charity, although a spokesman said the Catholic Church needed to go further in supporting condom use for preventing the spread of Aids.
The new book is based on a series of interviews the Pope gave German Catholic journalist, Peter Seewald, earlier this year.
The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published excerpts of the interview in its Saturday edition.
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A two-year-old boy has died in a house fire in Cheshire, the fire service has said.
Fire crews were called to a terraced property in Myrtle Street in Crewe shortly before 0900 GMT.
Four firefighters went into the house and rescued the toddler from a bedroom, but he died at the scene.
Two other children – a baby and a three-year-old – were lowered to safety from a first floor window by their parents before firefighters arrived.
The surviving children, their parents and two neighbours were taken to hospital by ambulance.
The fire service and police have started an investigation into the cause of the fire.
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A man found with serious head injuries in west Belfast early on Sunday has died in hospital.
Police and ambulance crews were called to a property at Upton Court, off the Glen Road, at about 0550.
The 55-year-old man was taken to hospital where he died on Sunday afternoon.
Police are treating the death as suspicious and have appealed for anyone with information about the incident to contact them.
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Fixtures in Scotland face possible postponement next weekend after Category One referees vote to strike.
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Girls can start their periods as young as 10 At least 30 genes appear to play a role in the age at which girls reach puberty, according to an international group of scientists.
The team scanned the genetic code of more than 100,000 women, reporting their findings in the journal Nature Genetics.
In the UK, girls as young as 10 are now showing the first signs of puberty.
A specialist said early puberty was linked to an increased risk of female cancers later in life.
The reasons why girls are going through puberty several years earlier than a century ago are not well understood by scientists.
Some have suggested a relationship between early puberty and obesity, and the latest research, carried out by the Reprogen consortium of scientists from the US, Europe and Australia, supports this idea.
Among the 30 genes highlighted by their genome research were some already linked to fat metabolism and weight regulation.
However, it is still not clear whether being obese or overweight in childhood is itself the cause of early puberty, or just another consequence of a different mechanism.
In addition, the study does not show how much of the risk is due to genes, and how much other environmental factors such as diet and upbringing are responsible.
One author, Dr Ken Ong, from the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge, said: “We know that girls who are overweight are more likely to go through puberty at young ages.
“You need to be aware that you may be laying down your future risk from childhood”
Professor Anthony Swerdlow, Institute of Cancer Research
“If rates of childhood obesity continue to rise we will see many more girls with puberty at young ages.”
Dr Anna Murray, another of the researchers from Exeter University, suggested that holding larger stores of fat might signal to the brain that it had the resources to start a woman’s reproductive life.
She said: “We found that the timing of puberty is related to fatty acid metabolic pathways – there is evidence that the brain can sense these types of body fats.”
Aside from the confusion experienced by young children entering puberty, it carries other health risks in the longer term.
Professor Anthony Swerdlow, from the Institute of Cancer Research, said that early puberty meant a higher risk of female cancers, particularly breast cancer.
This was possibly due to a higher lifetime exposure to sex hormones such as oestrogen.
He said that good diet and exercise, or the lack of it, in early childhood might be crucial to health many decades later.
He said: “What we increasingly believe is that, at least for breast cancer, the risk starts very, very young, even before puberty.
“If you are to prevent it, you need to be aware that you may be laying down your future risk from childhood.”
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The former business secretary says he wants his advice to be taken seriously by Ed Miliband
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Four men have been charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent over an attack in Northamptonshire which has left a 16-year-old boy critically ill.
The victim was seriously assaulted in Stratford Road in the village of Deanshanger on Friday morning and taken to Milton Keynes General Hospital.
A 21-year-old and three men aged 19 are in police custody and are due before Northampton magistrates on Monday.
They are from Deanshanger, Cosgrove and Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire.
Police said they were not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident and appealed for anyone with information to contact them.
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Israel sent troops into Gaza to try to put an end to Palestinian rocket-fire Two Israeli soldiers convicted of using a Palestinian child as a human shield during an offensive in Gaza in 2009 have received suspended sentences and been demoted.
The soldiers had forced the nine-year-old boy to open suspected booby-trapped bags at gunpoint.
It occurred during Israel’s three-week conflict with Hamas, which rules Gaza.
It was reportedly the first such conviction in Israel, where the use of civilians as human shields is banned.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said the pair will be on probation for two years, AFP news agency reported.
During the soldiers’ trial in October, the boy, Majid Rabah, said he feared for his life.
“I thought they would kill me. I became very scared and wet my pants,” he said in an affidavit.
Majid Rabah’s mother, Fatma, criticised the sentence as too lenient.
“It is completely unfair, because it was supposed to be more than this. Honestly, the fear that we felt in those moments, the fear that came after that and the negative side-effects to the child – [the soldiers] deserve more.”
The soldiers’ lawyer, Ilan Katz, however, said the sentence was appropriate.
“The fact that the court didn’t decide to put the two accused in the prison speaks clearly that even the military court didn’t think that in this case it was right to make a trial against the two soldiers because what they have done, they have done during a hard war when their life was under a big and serious danger.”
Israel launched its offensive in December 2008 following a barrage of Palestinian rocket attacks from the territory.
Some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed during 22 days of fighting.
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Adm Mullen said the report confirmed US concerns that North Korea was enriching uranium The US has said a report that North Korea has built a new nuclear facility is further evidence of Pyongyang’s “belligerent behaviour”.
The top US military officer, Adm Mike Mullen, said North Korea was “continuing on a path which is destabilising for the region”.
A US scientist said he been shown “more than 1,000 centrifuges” for enriching uranium on a visit to North Korea.
Enriched uranium can be used for nuclear fuel or made into weapons.
“From my perspective, it’s North Korea continuing on a path which is destabilising for the region,” Adm Mullen, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN.
“It confirms or validates the concern we’ve had for years about their enriching uranium, which they’ve denied routinely,” he said.
In September last year, after having denied enriching uranium, North Korea said it was in the final stage of uranium enrichment, and further warned that it was continuing to reprocess and weaponise plutonium.
Adm Mullen said the latest report of the North’s nuclear activity should be seen in the light of the March sinking of a South Korean warship, which Seoul and Washington blamed on Pyongyang.
The sinking of the Cheonan in a suspected torpedo attack left 46 South Korean sailors dead and inflamed tensions on the Korean peninsula.
“All of this is consistent with belligerent behaviour, the kind of instability creation in a part of the world that is very dangerous,” Adm Mullen said.
His remarks followed the publication of a report by US nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker on his trip last week to North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear complex, which is about 100km (60 miles) north of the capital Pyongyang.
He said he had been shown an experimental light-water nuclear reactor that was still under construction and a new facility that contained “more than 1,000 centrifuges” that the North Koreans told him was processing low-enriched uranium for fuel for the new reactor.
The North Koreans told him the facility contained 2,000 centrifuges.
He said the facility seemed designed primarily for civilian nuclear power but could be easily converted to further process uranium to weapons grade.
The plant was modern and clean, unlike all the other Yongbyon facilities he had seen, and he was stunned at how sophisticated it was, the Stanford University scientist said.
The US is hoping to revive six-party talks over the North’s nuclear facilities based at Yongbyon
He also said the North Koreans told him the new plant was “constructed and operated strictly with indigenous resources and talent”.
When international weapons inspectors were expelled from North Korea in 2009, the plant did not exist, officials say.
The North is believed to have weaponised enough plutonium for at least six atomic bombs but is not known to have a uranium-based weapons programme.
The report came as Stephen Bosworth, a senior US state department official responsible for North Korea, was travelling to Asia to try to revive six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.
Beginning with a stop in the South Korean capital Seoul, Mr Bosworth will then travel to Tokyo and Beijing.
North Korea has nuclear and missile programmes and conducted underground atomic tests in 2006 and 2009.
The speed with which the country is pressing ahead with its nuclear programme will deepen suspicions that it is receiving help from abroad in circumventing United Nations sanctions, correspondents say.
The North has reportedly expressed a conditional willingness to return to the stalled talks and some analysts suggest it may have revealed these new uranium enrichment facilities in a bid to strengthen its negotiating hand.
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