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LONDON: British prime minister David Cameron apologized on behalf of his country Tuesday for the 1972 slaughter of 13 Catholic demonstrators in the Northern Ireland town of Londonderry, an outrage that became known as "Bloody Sunday." In a solemn statement to the British House of Commons, Cameron said that a mammoth, 12-year investigation into the killings left no doubt that the soldiers confronting crowds of Catholic demonstrators in Londonderry's hard-line Bogside district mowed down unarmed protesters without provocation. "What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong," Cameron said, as a crowd watching him from Londonderry...

FURNESS DIG MAY HAVE FOUND ST PATRICK'S BIRTHPLACE Published on 12/07/2005 ARCHAEOLOGISTS believe they have found the birthplace of St Patrick. A dig in Urswick has uncovered a Roman fort which may be the Banna Vernta Berniae, thought by scholars to be where Ireland’s patron saint was born. Excavations are being led by Steve Dickinson, from Ulverston, who tutors archaeology at Lancaster University. Evidence of the Romans in Furness is rare. But Mr Dickinson is convinced the finds at Urswick are Roman with their typical layout of foundations and ditches. Mr Dickinson said: “I can’t tell you how important it...

I have created a public register of "bump lists" here on Free Republic. I define a bump list as a name listed in the "To" field used to index articles. Free Republic Bump List Register

RECORDS of Osama Bin Laden’s calls from his satellite phone reveal Britain was at the heart of the terrorist’s planning for his worldwide campaign of murder and destruction. Bin Laden and his most senior lieutenants made more than 260 calls from their base in Afghanistan to 27 numbers in Britain. They included suspected terrorist agents, sympathisers and companies. Some were prearranged calls to contacts using public pay phones. The records, obtained by The Sunday Times, show that the terrorist leader made more calls to Britain than any other country in the two years that he used the phone. He stopped...

One day last month, 100,000 Irish people took to the streets of Dublin to demonstrate against war in the Gulf. Although it was a protest against war, all of the posters were aimed at George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and Israel. None were directed against Saddam Hussein, as though he had no part to play in preventing war. This was a march of the well-intentioned but naïve, the duped, the ignorant, and those who simply hate America. The demonstration in Ireland was, of course, typical of what took place all over Europe on that day, and in protests since....

"PEACE ACTIVIST" Mary Kelly arrested after a hatchet attack on a United States Navy transport plane in Shannon which caused €500,000-worth of damage has been honoured in New York by supporters of the dissident Republican Sinn Fein (RSF) group, which has links to the Continuity IRA. She was supposed to be one of two female guests of honour at a $750-a-table fundraising dinner in the Astoria World Manor hotel on Friday night. The vice-president of RSF, Mary Ward, read out a citation in her honour which received a sustained round of applause from the audience. Described by advertisements for the...

On September 12, 1997, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Mary Robinson as the United Nation's High Commissioner for Human Rights. On paper, Robinson is as eminently qualified as any other U.N. political appointee. For seven years, she served as president of Ireland. The website of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights trumpets Robinson's "outstanding legal qualifications" and her long record in human rights. Chief among Robinson's accomplishments are her attendance and participation in many United Nations conferences and her travel. The official website crows, "Ms. Robinson was the first head of State to visit Rwanda in...

There is a more sinister side to anti-globalisation, says Eilis O'Hanlon AS THE full-time conscience of liberal Ireland, Fintan O'Toole will no doubt be surprised to discover that he has something in common with French National Front leader Jean Marie Le Pen; but neither man seemed distraught at the brutal murder last week of the maverick Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. For Le Pen, it was Fortuyn's open homosexuality which seemed to breed indifference to his fate at the hands of a lone gunman in Hilversum; for O'Toole, it was Fortuyn's views on immigration and culture. Standing in for Eamon Dunphy...

DUBLIN - The Irish used to go down to the sea in canoe-like, hide-covered, small boats called curraghs, taking a poke at fate and the rough Atlantic seas. Today, the island nation of less than four million people, or about one percent of EU's population, boasts the world's biggest car ferry, Ulysses, and the world's largest -- and one of its most controversial -- fishing vessels, Atlantic Dawn. The 64-million-euro, 14,055-gross-tonne trawler cum fish processing plant can store 7,000 tonnes of fish, or enough to feed 18 million people. It fishes off Mauritania under a private agreement between its owner,...

Jerusalem Post Internet Edition April 29, 2002 British bomb expert sees Palestinian-IRA link By Douglas Davis LONDON - A former British explosives expert now working for the Red Cross in the Jenin refugee camp has found 200 explosive devices that are identical to those used by the IRA in Northern Ireland, according to a report in The Sunday Telegraph yesterday. Former Royal Engineers bomb-disposal expert Paul Collinson told the London-based paper that the devices he had found were identical in every detail to those he had encountered in Northern Ireland. He is convinced that the devices were wither supplied by...

<p>March 30, 2002 -- Break out the haggis - the Scottish are coming!</p> <p>Actor Sean Connery will lead a brigade of as many as 10,000 bagpipers through the streets of Midtown next weekend to celebrate Tartan Day.</p> <p>Pipers from 30 countries, including Japan, Australia and Pakistan, are expected to fill the air with rich - and occasionally piercing - notes as organizers try to break the world record for assembling the most pipers in one place.</p>

A 25-YEAR-OLD woman cried "Mam please put me out, I didn't mean to do it" after she poured petrol over her head and set herself alight in her back garden, an inquest was told yesterday. Christina Guerrine, of Coonmore Park, Jobstown, Tallaght, died from shock caused by severe burns following the incident last July 26. Evidence given by the deceased's mother, Monica Guerrine, in Dublin City Coroner's Court, revealed that the victim was a heroin user, was prone to impulsive behaviour, and had tried to harm herself a few years previously by taking a drug overdose. Mrs Guerrine told the...

<p>April 2, 2002 -- LIKE a bad dream, he appeared from nowhere.</p> <p>Live from Ramallah - Adam Shapiro!</p> <p>I was on the air with Bob Grant on WOR, 710 AM, yesterday. All of a sudden, the electronic gods and a mischievous producer conjured up the man I'd referred to in my column as the "Jewish Taliban."</p>

NEW YORK, Mar 30, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Steve Quester is spending his spring break in the West Bank. Quester, a public school teacher, is joining about 20 other American activists who are traveling to the Palestinian territories to act as human shields for Palestinians as the Israeli military mounts retaliatory strikes for a series of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. "We're going to put ourselves in the way between Israeli military aggression and a helpless civilian population," said Quester, 39, who departs Sunday for a ten-day trip. He and other activists, several of whom are already...

Unionists outrage local Muslims Unionist councillors in County Antrim have outraged local Muslims by refusing to accept an Islamic gift which had been presented to an SDLP member. One Democratic Unionist Party member of Ballymena council said he was suspicious of Muslims because of the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States. The gift at the centre of the row is a brass plate, decorated with Islamic designs intended to express friendship with the people of the town. It was presented to SDLP councillor Declan O'Loan at an exhibition in the town's museum. He wanted to pass it to...

Give Bono's Money AwayBy Terence P. Jeffrey The Irish rock singer Paul Hewson—who insists the world call him Bono—visited Washington last week to demand more U.S. foreign aid. He even enlisted President Bush in the cause.Here’s a suggestion for the President: Slap a 100% tax on all income earned here by foreign rock stars to offset the cost of foreign aid.Bono—who writes lyrics like "Alright alright, alright, alright, alright/It's alright, it's alright, it's alright, it's alright"—sees himself as a poet. The Bono Tax would be such an act of poetic justice you have to believe he’d love it.Here’s how it...

Posted on Thu, Mar. 21, 2002 Pope speaks out about sex abuse scandalsBy VICTOR L. SIMPSON Associated Press Writer VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II on Thursday broke his silence on the sex abuse cases rocking the Roman Catholic Church, saying the "grave scandal" was casting a "dark shadow of suspicion" over all priests. In an annual message to priests worldwide, the pope said "as priests we are personally and profoundly afflicted by the sins of some of our brothers who have betrayed the grace of ordination." He said they had succumbed "to the most grievous forms" of...

MARY Robinson vowed yesterday to continue "irritating and annoying" powerful interests to protect basic human rights. Mrs Robinson said she would work "flat out" in her final six months as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. When she left that job, she would seek ways to protect the world's poor from the impoverishing effects of globalisation, she said. The former Irish president said it was part of her job as defender of human rights around the world to annoy powerful countries. Accepting she had been critical of the US bombing of Afghanistan and the US treatment of prisoners at Camp...

When George Bush announced a $5bn hike in US aid last week, many were surprised by the figure at his side - the same Irish rock star who once routinely denounced the president's father. Bono tells Madeleine Bunting and Oliver Burkeman how he wooed Washington Senator Jesse Helms is 80 years old. He walks with a four-pronged cane. A fearsomely rightwing evangelical Christian, he has repeatedly exploited racial prejudice in his election campaigns. He believes that homosexuals are "weak, morally sick wretches", and a couple of years ago, he endorsed a report entitled "There Is A Virus Loose Within Our...

I WAS WORRIED about yesterday's Sunday News. It was St. Patrick's Day and there were quite a few references to Ireland. I was concerned that the paper might be stopped and seized at the border. That would be New Hampshire's border with the Socialist Republic of Vermont, where there still may be more cows than people, but the cows have apparently given up any hope of trying to run the place. Vermont's motor vehicle department, and at least one court, won't let a driver have the word "Irish" on her license plate. Interestingly, in Indiana, home of the Fighting...