Mr Pearson, 30, was found with his throat cut in an apparent suicide at his home in Plumstead, south London, last Friday. Inquest opens into cousin’s death

The inquest into the death of Paul Pearson, the cousin of murdered schoolgirl Kirsty Tidman, who was found dead after being questioned about her killing, was opened and adjourned yesterday. The brief hearing took place as police continued searching the River Thames after Kirsty’s headless body, her arms and one of her legs were found in the water.
Kirsty, 14, disappeared from her home near the river in Charlton, southeast London, on May 4. He announced his decision after recording the last programme in the current series, which will be broadcast later this month.Mr Coleman, who was immortalised with a Spitting Image puppet, said he wanted to do other things, not necessarily connected to television, although he will continue to be the BBC’s senior athletics commentator..

Coleman to leave BBC sports quiz

David Coleman is to retire as host of television’s longest-running sports entertainment quiz A Question of Sport, the BBC announced yesterday.
The 71-year-old athletics commentator (pictured) has been at the helm of the popular show for 18 years and said he felt it was time to move on. Until now, bat experts had found only isolated individuals of the species in the British Isles and thought them to be migrants from the continent, but the Northern Ireland discovery shows they are residents Nicholas Schoon. Bat species discovered in Ulster

The British Isles have a new kind of bat. Scientists from Queen’s University, Belfast have discovered a colony of Nathusius’s pipistrelle roosting in a building in Antrim, Northern Ireland.

English team wins chess victory

The English chess team has won the European Championship in Pula, Croatia. England ended level with Russia in first place, but took the title on tie-break. It is the first time England have captured a major title in a team event.
During the 1980s, when both Nigel Short and Jonathan Speelman progressed to the final stages of the world individual championship, England was second only to the Soviet Union in the world rankings.The collapse of the USSR, however, not only failed to diminish Russian dominance, but unleashed a dozen teams from the former Soviet republics all capable of challenging for medals at major events.. He said this would not be achieved by simple cuts in tax rates alone but by a wider re-alignment of personal allowances, tax bands, social insurance contributions and the basic tax rate Alan Murdoch. Flanked by Labour Party leader and Foreign Minister Dick Spring and Proinsias de Rossa, the Democratic Left leader and Social Welfare Minister, Mr Bruton committed the coalition to reducing “the tax take” for an average single earner to 22p in the pound and to 14p for a married person. The poet’s epitaph for the sportsman dwelt on the irony that the man who organised that mixed evening should fall victim to a sectarian killer.. Bruton sets election date and promises tax cuts

The Irish Prime Minister, John Bruton, yesterday ended months of speculation by announcing that an Irish general election will be held on 6 June.
After a brief announcement to TD’s (MPs), he went to President Mary Robinson to request the dissolution of the Dail then joined colleagues in his three- party coalition in launching their manifesto.

He was the easiest of easy targets, a non-political man except in the sense that he was identifiably Catholic and Irish.Bellaghy is a largely Catholic town, but both Catholics and Protestants were there to see Sean Brown present the painting to Seamus Heaney. Most of all, he was a pivotal figure in the local Gaelic Athletic Association, which is the focus of Bellaghy’s sporting, recreational and social life.On most evenings, he locked up the GAA hall, securing the doors and setting the alarms which are a necessity in this part of Northern Ireland, for the premises have twice been burned down by loyalists. He left behind a wife, six children and a community stunned by the injustice of it all. In its time Bellaghy has produced some notorious republican gunmen, among them Dominic McGlinchey, but Mr Brown was not in this tradition.Rather, he was a civil servant approaching retirement, having spent 30 years teaching mechanical engineering. He was commended as an outstanding citizen by everyone from the parish priest to the local Royal Ulster Constabulary.