Thomas Hennessey’s book on the Republican hunger strikes in Northern Ireland sides too often with the British establishment, writes JP O’Malley.

A series of strong earthquakes shook the quake-weary New Zealand city of Christchurch today, briefly trapping two people inside a church.

New Zealand’s powerful earthquake that smashed buildings, cracked roads and twisted railway lines around Christchurch ripped a new 11ft wide fault line in the earth’s surface, a geologist said today.