MY GRANDFATHER, Pat Harris, spoke proudly of marching to Macroom on Easter Monday, 1916, and of being arrested with Terence MacSwiney on August 12, 1920, at a meeting of the officers of Cork No 1 Brigade in Cork’s City Hall. But he never spoke about what the First Cork Brigade did in the two years that followed.

A jury ordered the Boy Scouts of America to pay $18.5m to a man who was sexually abused by a former assistant Scoutmaster in what is believed to be the largest such award against the national organisation.

The US Boy Scouts organisation has been ordered to pay $1.4m (€1m) to a man who claimed he was sexually abused by a leader as a child.

The lawyer for a US man who filed a $29m (€21.6m) sex abuse lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America told a jury the Scouts knew they had a serious problem but failed to act.

The Boy Scouts of America showed reckless indifference to protecting young Scouts when it kept confidential two decades worth of files on suspected molesters among its troop leaders, a psychologist testified as part of a $14m lawsuit against the organisation.

The pope’s birthday present from George Bush today comprised at least 9,000 guests on the White House lawn, a 21-gun salute, a famed soprano’s rendition of The Lord’s Prayer and an emotional presidential welcome.

Proposals to send up to 30 Irish troops to help the Hurricane Katrina relief effort in the United States were dismissed as ludicrous today by a leading humanitarian worker.

An American flag that purportedly flew over the Pentagon on September 11 was burned by a man who said he wanted to end questions of authenticity over the banner he bought for €19,100.

Four American Boy Scout leaders were killed in an electrical accident early today, during the opening day of their organisation’s 2005 jamboree.

THE Boy Scouts of America have been slapped with two lawsuits demanding the organisation cover the $14 million (€11.25m) it cost to fight a June 2002 blaze it claims scouts started in Wyoming.

Warnings of a possible terrorist attack on New York contained in an August 2001 White House briefing paper never reached City Hall, but probably would not have changed local security precautions, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani told the September 11 commission today.

Some of the honours given to Bob Hope:

Two gay Boy Scout leaders in the US today lost their bid to return to the organisation when an appeal court overturned an order that they be reinstated as troop leaders.

A US Boy Scout has been given a week to find God or face expulsion from the organisation.

Yasser Arafat is considering appointing a prime minister to share the running of day-to-day government affairs once a Palestinian state is declared after a planned January election.