Irish police have said a detective killed near Dundalk in County Louth was shot without warning. Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe, 41, a father of two, was murdered as he acted to stop an attempted robbery at a branch of Credit Union bank in Bellurgan, Jenkinstown.

It is an odd fact of UK life that we are home to the biggest and most sophisticated international financial centre in the world, but it seems unable to meet the demand from the British public for home loans at prices they can afford, and it is equally bad at providing loans for small businesses. It is notoriously reluctant to finance the start-ups and early-stage ventures on which our future prosperity depends, and on the other side of the balance sheet it is totally unable to deliver a reasonable return to savers, either on an individual level or via pension schemes.

The dude who got Gangnam Style stuck in my head for a month?

A gunman sprayed bullets at the headquarters of Greece's governing centre-right New Democracy party near central Athens early today, with one hitting an office occasionally used by the country's prime minister, officials said. No-one was hurt.

The UN Security Council has approved an African-led military operation to oust al-Qa’ida-linked extremists from northern Mali – but not before the training of the country’s security forces and progress on political reconciliation and elections.

AG Barr has served up a refreshing set of figures ahead of its planned £1.5bn merger with Britvic.

Today

More than one in 10 tip-offs about corporate wrongdoing received by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) came from overseas, with British whistleblowers topping the list, a global investigations firm said yesterday.

The frontman of the rock band The Flaming Lips, who attempted to take a replica grenade on to a domestic flight, prompting a security “lockdown” at Oklahoma City airport, has admitted he had “not quite thought” about the possible consequences of his actions.

Police are hoping that a baseball cap found inside a US zoo will help them track down the suspects in the beating death of a monkey.

The Analyst

Signs of life in the great British boozer should emerge this week when the Spirit Pub Company cheers the sector with upbeat profit figures.

With the fires from the Libor scandal still burning, the temperature is rising in the oil markets amid mounting concerns that this could be the next of the City's dark corners to blaze into life.