China detained another activist amid intense efforts to suppress commemorations of next week’s 25th anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.

A new police investigation into the Hillsborough Disaster was announced by the UK Home Secretary today.

Lawyers acting on behalf of families of those killed in the Hillsborough disaster will today write to the Attorney General demanding that new inquests be held in Liverpool.

FORMER military strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega was flown home to Panama yesterday to be punished once again for crimes he committed during a career that saw him transformed from a Cold War ally of Washington to the target of a US invasion.

Police were working today to identify three of six bodies discovered at the home of a convicted rapist.

Huge crowds surged into the streets of Georgia’s capital Tbilisi today to demonstrate against Russia.

Tourists visiting Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, site of the 1989 violent crackdown on student demonstrators, will have to pass through a security check, a government official said today.

There is no documentary evidence explaining the source of some transactions from a bank account set up for former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's constituency office, the Mahon Tribunal heard today.

As China raised its death toll after riots in Tibet to 19 today, US presidential hopeful John McCain criticised Beijing’s actions as “not acceptable”.

A MAN who was jailed for throwing paint on Mao Zedong’s portrait in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square during pro-democracy protests in 1989 has been released after nearly 17 years in prison, his family said.

A Chinese dissident has been jailed for 12 years for organising anti-Japanese protests on the mainland, it was reported today.

A Chinese government spokesman has rejected comparisons between the fatal police shooting of villagers last week and the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, saying no conclusion has been reached about the most recent violence.

Former English amateur champion Richard Finch, playing just the ninth European Tour event of his career and ranked 716th in the world, broke the course record with a dazzling second-round 63 at the Italian Open in Milan today.

Police kept China’s symbolic heart of Tiananmen Square free of demonstrators today, detaining at least 13 people while activists abroad marked the 15th anniversary of the attack on pro-democracy protesters.

Fifteen years after the bloodshed, the exiled student leaders of China’s 1989 pro-democracy protests are settled abroad as academics and entrepreneurs. But they nurture one wish above all – to come home to a new system.

A Hong Kong-based British citizen has been sentenced to life in prison by a Chinese court on spying charges, it was reported today.

Libya has signed a compensation accord worth €132.5m with families of victims of a 1989 French jetliner bombing over Africa.

THREE men, convicted but later cleared of the 1989 attack of a jogger in Central Park, will file a federal lawsuit seeking $50 million in damages for each of them, said their lawyer on Sunday.

Opposition supporters broke into Georgia’s Parliament today, scuffling with lawmakers and forcing President Eduard Shevardnadze to flee as thousands of protesters outside demanded his resignation.

The President of Ireland was in salubrious company as she met her Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Relatives of victims of a 1989 French airliner bombing have signed an increased compensation deal with Libya, paving the way for a UN resolution lifting sanctions against the North African country.

Negotiations with Libya over increased compensation for families of victims of a 1989 French airliner bombing over the Niger desert have hit an impasse, a representative the families said today.

Families of victims of the 1989 bombing of a French airliner returned from Libya saying that negotiations had failed to win a compensation package on par with the €2.5bn Lockerbie settlement.

MORE than 300 mutinous Philippine troops who had seized a downtown residential shopping complex surrendered late yesterday, ending a 19-hour standoff with government forces without a shot fired.

A British government-backed investigation into six controversial killings in Northern Ireland is almost a year ahead of schedule, it was revealed today.

Footage of the Tiananmen Square massacre could be broadcast in China for the first time.

Olympic Council of Ireland president Pat Hickey's team faces a battle to hold onto their jobs next month, two weeks after the Sports Council is due to publish a review of Ireland's disappointing Olympic display.