A small (23cm), distinctively-marked wader, the Turnstone is a common sight all around the Irish coast. Although found here throughout the year, the species does not breed in Ireland; most seen here visit only for the winter, though many youngsters in their first year, not yet of breeding age, choose to remain for the summer too. Very much associated with rocky shores, especially those with an abundance of seaweed, they are also frequently encountered on shingle beaches, estuarine mudflats and piers, where they can appear quite tame and tolerant of people and dogs.

In connection with the demerger of its general produce and distribution business, Fyffes announces the following Board changes:

Sixty five on New Year's Eve, Alex Ferguson has done it all at Manchester United with a reign so epic it demands comparison outside football. And he dismisses any suggestion that he retire as ‘scandalous'. By Ken Early

Leo Enright on the first in a series of European Space Agency (ESA) town hall meetings early next month to discuss European involvement in America's plan to establish a permanent human outpost near the south pole of the Moon.

Many of the billions raised in aid of victims of the tsunami in South East Asia two years ago have been lost to corruption and mismanagement. By Seth Mydans in Banda Aceh, Indonesia

I grew up in what was a theocracy in all but name. Hell and heaven and purgatory were places real and certain we would go to after death, dependent on the Judgement. Churches in my part of Ireland were so crowded that children and old people who were fasting to receive Communion would regularly pass out in the bad air and have to be carried outside. Not to attend Sunday Mass was to court social ostracism, to be seen as mad or consorting with the devil, or, at best, to be seriously eccentric.

Sean South was killed on New Year's day during the most famous raid of the IRA's Border Campaign. That offensive is underestimated in terms of its impact on subsequent events in the North, says Ruan O'Donnell

The ‘upside-down church'

^^ After serving up an embarrassing diet of terrible Christmas television, it's time for RTÉ to reflect on its current schedules and make big changes. Tired Late Late Show, Prime Time, and Questions and Answers formats will need to be replaced with something fresh ahead of the upcoming general election

An eye for an iPod: For people who want to believe in the potential for new media technology to create democratic and occasionally corporate-evading outcomes, there was depressing news under the Christmas tree. Ditto for the far-louder chorus who keep telling us that capitalist markets create diverse products of great excellence at keen prices. (You know who you are, ye talking heads on health insurance, mobile phones, electricity, transport, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.)