Pádraig Harrington believes Shane Lowry’s nightmare finish to the 2016 US Open at Oakmont can act as a help rather than a hindrance as the Offaly man chases a first major win at Portrush this weekend.

US: The Yellow Cloud electric guitar that Prince played in numerous concerts has been sold for more than £100,000 at an auction in the US.

ENGLAND: An online customer made an unusual football prediction over the weekend to scoop £30,000 pounds from a £5 bet.

Millions set aside for Germanwings crash costs, 90 percent of teachers need training, Catholic weddings declining and Dunphy claims McCarthy is a flop. Some of the latest and most read news on irishexaminer.com this lunchtime

A western Pennsylvania newlywed has been convicted of involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment in the shooting death of her niece hours after the ceremony.

USA: Body art is not for animals, at least not in New York.

MUSIC AMNESTY

SWISS CHAIN SORRY FOR ‘UNFORGIVABLE’ PACKAGING

RAISING THE DEAD

Pennsylvania parents locked son in car boot to cure fear of dark

USA:An Indiana woman is under investigation after her husband’s corpse was left in their home for more than nine months and fed on by birds, authorities said.

SAMBA SADNESS

A post-mortem on Hollywood actor Philip Seymour Hoffman’s body is inconclusive, and tests will be needed to determine what caused his death, the New York City’s medical examiner’s office says.

Four people have reportedly been arrested in connection with drugs found in the New York home of Philip Seymour Hoffman who died on Sunday.

DRUG STORES

Even President Barack Obama took time out of his busy re-election campaign to wade into last week’s debate-du-jour.

Writer and journalist George Kimball hung on long enough for one last American Independence Day. He died a year ago on Friday.

He became a frontrunner too late to face much criticism before the Republicans’ Iowa caucus. But Rick Santorum is now under fire for his stance on a number of issues, writes Marcus Stern

AN IDAHO man accused of firing an assault rifle at the White House was charged yesterday with attempting to assassinate President Barack Obama or his staff, and prosecutors say he called Obama “the devil” and said he needed to be killed.

President Barack Obama honoured the legacy of September 11 victims by personally tracing the trail of the terrorist attacks, proudly declaring that the decade since has proven “America does not give in to fear”.

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama and former President George W Bush stood in silence yesterday as a church bell rang twice on the precise moment, ten years after the first plane struck the World Trade Center.

US RESCUE crews had to use ropes and ladders to retrieve a woman from her pickup truck after it ran off a road and landed in tree tops about 30 feet above ground in a ravine.

A boy of 11 accused of killing his father’s pregnant fiancee with a shotgun will be tried as an adult, a judge ruled today.

AN 11-year-old boy accused of killing his father’s pregnant fiance had been making threats about harming the woman for a while, the woman’s mother said yesterday.

A pre-dawn fire tore through a home where three generations of the same family lived, killing 10 people, most of them children.

THE Pentagon has charged six detainees at Guantanamo Bay with murder and war crimes in connection with the September 11 attacks.

Rescuers found no signs of life after drilling a fourth hole into a collapsed mine in the US where six workers have been trapped for nearly two weeks.

NTR has today announced its first two recycling acquisitions in North America, with the acquisition of Recycle Management Corp of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Delta Management Group LLC of Normal, Illinois.

PUNXSUTAWNEY Phil saw his shadow, but it was hard to find a complainer in the crowd on Gobbler’s Knob, where the morning temperature was well above freezing.

Hurricane Isabel pushed its way up the US eastern seaboard, weakening from 100 mph winds to a tropical storm but not before swamping roads and knocking out power to more than 2.5 million people.

Hurricane Isabel ploughed into the US east coast with 100 mph winds causing at least three deaths and knocking out power to more than 2.5 million people.

US President George W Bush today declared North Carolina a disaster area as Hurricane Isabel ploughed into coastal islands on the US eastern seaboard with 100 mph winds.

Nearly a million people were without electricity on America’s east coast tonight as hurricane Isabel slammed ashore.

The large eye of a weakened Hurricane Isabel crossed the coastal islands off North Carolina today as the storm pounded the coast.

A history professor accused of fatally slitting her six-month-old daughter’s throat was charged with second-degree murder in the US.

The nine Pennsylvania coal miners who were trapped underground for 77 hours have sold the TV and book rights to their story to Walt Disney for dlrs 150,000 (€152,000) each, their lawyer said.

There was one thought that kept returning to Blaine Mayhugh during the three days he was trapped 240ft underground in a flooded mine: He did not kiss his wife goodbye before he left for work.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the first person accused of being an accomplice in the September 11 terrorist attacks, will today plead not guilty to conspiring to kill and maim thousands of victims.

Two United Airlines jetliners crashed this morning, one in western Pennsylvania and the second at a location the airline did not immediately disclose.