The Los Angeles Times won five Pulitzer prizes in 2004, but didn't increase its readership or revenue. Now its parent company is slashing costs, and the editor has quit. Village reports on the newspaper's decline, and how it bodes ill for the media in the US – and, eventually, here.  By Conor Brady.

Homemade, easy-to-cook soups are the prefect antidote to the cold, dark winter days and nights upon us. Made with cheap and convenient ingredients, Darina Allen tells even the most basic of cooks how to throw together their own homemade soup

On Saturday along with thousands of others I will make my way to Lansdowne Road to see the Irish rugby team play. I have been trying to remember how often I have done this and can't. A few times a year for the last 20 years, probably about 100 times.

We are either in for one of the longest election campaigns in recent times or Bertie's going to call a snap election if and when he thinks the conditions for such a contest would be most advantageous for Fianna Fáil. Timing will be everything. All the Leinster House parties are very clearly on an election footing.

Unionists will have to accept they are powerless to stop the British Government introducing legislation allowing IRA 'On-The-Runs' (OTRs) to return to Northern Ireland, David McNarry has said.

Anne Rice's new novel Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt is written in the first person, with a seven-year-old Jesus as the protagonist. Holiness meets creature comforts in this well-researched 'incantation'. This is a must for new and old Anne Rice fans

One of the Ulster Defence Association's most high-profile and notorious leaders was arrested on Tuesday 8 November in a major police investigation into serious crime in the greater Belfast area.

Not being a mother himself, many of the gags in Fiona Looney's Dandelions go over Colin Murphy's head, but he can still see why it will be a huge hit

Swingers in Ancient Rome; sexless singers in the 1980s; semis in Dundalk; songs from the soul and celebs in their element were all in a week of TV for Dermot Bolger

Right. Where was I? Oh yeah, my friend Paul's birthday do. When extending the invite to me a few weeks ago, he said, and I quote, "Hey, it's my birthday next week, so we're having a few drinks and a bit food in my place. And seriously – no gifts, okay?". So I didn't buy him a gift, much to the bemusement of another friend Declan's wife Helen, who was only dying for party night to roll around, hoping I would be shown up in polite company as some sort of tight-arse.