There are fears that loyalist paramilitaries may be rearming after one
of the largest weapons caches found in the North in two decades was
uncovered entirely by accident this week.
The former 26-County Taoiseach Brian Cowen has admitted his government
had no plan to deal with the economic collapse in 2008. He claimed that
‘nobody is more sorry’ than him about what happened to the country, but
refused to apologise for the debacle.
Tributes to the Nobel prize winner Derry poet Seamus Heaney has
dominated the Irish media following the announcement of his death this
morning, Friday 30th August.
A conviction against former internee Marian Price has been rescinded by
a court the day after it was imposed in the latest twist to the saga of
harassment and oppression of the former republican prisoner.
Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness has warned that “the extremes of political
unionism” have been boosted after DUP leader Peter Robinson rejected
plans for a peace centre on the site of the former Long Kesh prison.
Organisers of a republican commemoration in north Belfast are to seek a
High Court challenge over a Parades Commission decision to force it to
pass through a maze of back streets and into a dead end.
As the Dublin government begins to install water meters across the
Twenty-Six County state, eirigi Dublin City Councillor Louise Minihan
has called on local communities to “get organised” to resist the
installation programme.
The Stormont administration has suffered another blow to its
credibility after the DUP ended its support for a plan to develop a
peace centre at the site of the former Long Kesh H-Blocks.
An alliance between the anti-Catholic Orange Order and loyalist
paramilitaries has been blamed for the scenes of mayhem in Belfast city
centre events last Friday, August 9th, when a nationalist civil rights
parade was blocked and then attacked by loyalist mobs.
A legal and political power struggle has broken out involving Six County
civil servants, Crown officials, a Sinn Fein Minister and British Direct
Ruler Theresa Villiers.
The daughter of a County Tyrone republican has been urged by the PSNI to
turn informer on her own father, months after her cousin was subjected
to the same pressure.
There have been calls for an independent inquiry into allegations that
alcohol was distributed to Gardai and gifts handed out to residents on
behalf of Shell’s contentious pipeline and refinery project in northwest
County Mayo.
In 1969, a sectarian mob burned 1,500 residents from their homes on
Bombay Street, Belfast, 44 years ago this week, helping to give rise to the Provisional IRA:
Up to ten thousand republicans, socialists and concerned citizens took
part in a civil rights march against internment through Belfast this
evening despite heavy rioting by loyalists and a political campaign to
demonise those taking part.
Families of the Omagh bomb victims are being forced to go to the courts
to require the Dublin and London governments to hold a public inquiry
into the 1998 attack.
Controversy over a republican commemoration in County Tyrone this Sunday
has continued after the British Direct Ruler Theresa Villiers, in an
usually partisan intervention, demanded the parade be called off.
A unionist councillor was charged by the PSNI this evening over her
public support for the idea of a loyalist massacre at next week’s
republican commemoration in Castlederg.
The controversy over internet comments by DUP Councillor Ruth Patterson
will have dramatically escalated tensions over the planned republican
commemoration in Castlederg, which unionists want banned entirely.
One of Ireland’s best paid public employees, television and radio
personality Pat Kenny, has left Irish state broadcaster RTE (Radio
Teilifis Eireann).
Secret British documents from 1983 show the high level of concern in
London at the rise of Sinn Fein, and advanced plans to limit media
opportunities for the party.
There has been a worrying increase in the number of reprisal attacks in
Protestant areas as the warm summer continues to fuel sectarian clashes
at Belfast’s interfaces.
Relatives of those killed in the McGurk’s Bar bombing have called on the
PSNI police to release the findings of an investigation by their
Historical Enquiries Team into the UVF atrocity.