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Molly Malone 'Twas in old Atlanta, where Pop was a cantor, Our picket lines clashed, and I met my true love. My avid insistence met massive resistance, crying: "Rockets and missiles!. Alive, alive, oh! Alive, alive, oh, alive, alive, oh! Rockets and missiles! Alive, alive, oh! She was a bomb banner who walked from Savannah And there, I first set eyes on Molly Malone. She called me a blackguard and carried a placard, crying: "Rockets and missiles!. Alive, alive, oh! Alive, alive, oh, alive, alive, oh! Rockets and missiles! Alive, alive, oh! I am a warmonger, an old-time witch hunter...

<p>European elites witnessing the unilateral exercise of U.S. power in Afghanistan, the Philippines and now Georgia resemble the ex-smoker in a room with someone who still smokes. It reminds them, sometimes intolerably, of what they once were. For obvious historical reasons, Europeans, particularly Continentals, have bad memories of unilaterally exercised power and have long since concluded that the best way to contain war is the multilateral way.</p>

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - Voters have narrowly rejected a proposed amendment to Ireland's strict anti-abortion laws, Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said Thursday, dealing a significant defeat to his own government and to Catholic Church leaders. The Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy Bill was rejected on an approximately 51 percent "no" vote nationwide, according to results from 40 of 41 constituencies compiled by RTE, the Irish state-run broadcasting service. But Ahern, in a news conference outside his Dublin office, conceded defeat, saying his "honest and genuine attempt" to strengthen abortion laws "has been narrowly defeated." "I'm disappointed, but I'm a ...

The founding fathers, maybe Feb 26th 2002 From The Economist Global Agenda This week European notables launch what has been grandly dubbed the European Union's constitutional convention. The EU faces big challenges, not least enlargement to the east, that seem to demand a big overhaul. But winning agreement on these will not be easy. PAST it? Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has a riposte to those who say he is too old to preside over the European Union’s constitutional convention, which gets under way in Brussels on February 28th. He is 76; Benjamin Franklin was 81 when he played a leading role ...

Woman guilty of savage attack is to sue her victim 'for scratches' June Moore: plans to sue A WOMAN who drunkenly assaulted a French national, leaving her unable to have children, is now considering a counter suit because she suffered scratches during the assault. June Moore (21) from Killala Gardens, Knocknaheeny, Cork, was yesterday jailed for three years for an horrific assault on Lila Dorgan in September 2000. The French-Moroccan woman objected to Moore and her friend, Linda O'Driscoll (21), urinating in her apartment complex entranceway. O'Driscoll, also from Killala Gardens, Knocknaheeny, was jailed with Moore for three years after ...

A SEARCH by genealogists has confirmed the unlikely Irish heritage of boxing legend Muhammed Ali. Staff at the Clare Heritage Centre at Corofin have discovered that the three-times world boxing champion's great grandfather was Abe Grady who was born in the town Ennis in the 1840s. According to genealogist Antoinette O'Brien, Abe - who hailed from the Turnpike area of Ennis - emigrated to the US in the 1860s from Cappa Harbour, near Kilrush in west Clare. Some time after arriving in the US, Abe Grady settled in Kentucky, where he married an African-American woman. It is understood that their ...

Until 9.30am on Wednesday, Dublin time, the Allied Irish Bank was known in Ireland for its prudence, strong growth, sound management and careful control of risk. Two hours later it was world famous as the bank that failed to notice while a junior employee went on a year-long gambling spree that cost it $US750 million ($1.474 billion). At a hushed press conference, Ireland's largest retail bank admitted that it has become the biggest victim of "rogue trading" since Nick Leeson's $US1.4 billion losing streak brought down the venerable Barings Bank in 1995. At the heart of the scandal is ...

Anger as Sinn Fein MPs get offices LONDON (Reuters) - MPs belonging to Sinn Fein will be given offices in Westminster next month without having to swear an oath of loyalty to the queen -- though they will still not take their seats in the House of Commons. The government won a vote late on Tuesday by a vote of 322 to 189 giving four Sinn Fein MPs office space and expense allowances. Opposition Conservatives criticised the move as the latest in a string of concessions to Sinn Fein, the political ally of the IRA. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams ...

BELFAST (Reuters) - British police had information that renegade republicans were planning to attack the Northern Irish town of Omagh 11 days before a bomb in 1998 killed 29 people in the province's worst guerrilla atrocity, the BBC has reported. An investigation by the Police Ombudsman found that days before the August 15 bombing, police had been warned by an informant that an attack by republican dissidents was imminent, while another warning had mentioned Omagh and the planned date, the BBC said. A police detective was said to have spoken to an anonymous caller on August 4 for more than ...

DUBLIN (Reuters) - A much-postponed meeting of the British-Irish Council, intended to put flesh on the bones of the Northern Ireland peace process, will convene in Dublin on Friday amid hopes that provincial power-sharing is back on track. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Ireland's Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and leaders from Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands will attend only the second meeting of the council after an inaugural meeting held in London in December 1999. "It is another sign of normality," Dermot Nesbitt, a pro-British Unionist and minister at the office of Northern Ireland First Minister David Trimble, said this ...