Following a ground-breaking case in Germany last week, in which a former Auschwitz guard apologised for his crimes, Andrew Nagorski looks at the refusal of many former Nazis to say sorry.

The Fianna Fáil leader said that he is giving a free vote on the forthcoming abortion legislation because he did want to lose people.

The Taoiseach said that he has "no comment to make" after a senior Vatican official said any member of the Oireachtas describing themselves as a Catholic should resign rather than support the legislation.

DEVELOPERS have had a raw deal. Anybody who built something big during the bubble has been cast as reckless and greedy. It’s not a fair portrayal: many of them got caught up in the madness, carried on a wave that promised to deliver eternal prosperity.

Richard Fitzpatrick ponders the link between abnormal psychology and political power — and finds that many of those who have achieved high office were not, in fact, as stable as we think.

The French national railway’s bid to win America’s first high-speed rail contract will face the fury of Holocaust survivors today over the company’s role in transporting Jews to Nazi death camps.

Walter Cronkite, the premier TV anchorman of the US networks’ golden age who reported a tumultuous time with reassuring authority and came to be called “the most trusted man in America”, has died at the age of 92.

Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama, looking to chart a US foreign policy course far removed from the Bush administration’s path, said he would bring Osama bin Laden to justice in a way that would deny the al-Qaida leader the chance to become a martyr.

ABBY MANN, writer of socially-conscious scripts for movies and television and winner of the 1961 Academy Award for adapted screenplay for Judgment at Nuremberg, has died aged 80. The cause of death was not given.

YOU wouldn’t know who to boycott these last few weeks, so many worthies are turning out to have feet, knees and in some cases thighs of clay.

Facing global opposition fuelled by the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, Washington has dropped a contentious UN resolution that sought to renew an exemption shielding US troops from international prosecution for war crimes.