ESB Telecoms Limited (ESBT) has completed a €10m optical fibre cable which directly links Irish businesses with major British cities for the first time.

The ESB has teamed up with English company Geo to operate a fibre optic cable linking Ireland and the UK under the sea.

BOHEMIANS have been drawn against Welsh side TNS (now The New Saints, formerly Total Network Solutions) in the Champions League second round qualifying round.

Italy’s Giuliano Razzoli took the lead in the men’s slalom following the first run at Whistler Creekside on Saturday.

Militants were holding several security officers hostage inside Pakistan's army headquarters today after they and others attacked the complex in an audacious assault on the country's most powerful institution.

Investigators today examined the site of a suicide blast in Islamabad that targeted Pakistan’s police and left at least 15 people dead, while officials searched for clues about the alleged attacker.

A top US envoy delivered a blunt message to Pakistan’s military leader, telling him that emergency rule must be lifted and his opponents freed before elections.

At least 24 people were killed and 66 injured when two bombs ripped through a Pakistani army bus and a commercial district in a city near the capital Islamabad today.

Pakistani commandos stormed Islamabad’s Red Mosque compound today, sparking a fierce fight with militants accused of holding about 150 hostages inside.

The top-ranking cleric of a besieged radical mosque in Pakistan's capital Islamabad claimed today that government forces have killed more than 70 of his students, saying he and his supporters prefer martyrdom to capture.

Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, must resign from his army post, exiled former premier Benazir Bhutto said today.

Thousands of lawyers and flag-waving political activists rallied for the reinstatement of Pakistan’s chief justice as he appeared before a judicial panel investigating whether he abused his office.

GUNFIRE and rioting erupted yesterday as more than 70,000 people joined Pakistan’s biggest protest yet against Mohammed cartoons, burning cinemas, a KFC restaurant and a South Korean-run bus station.

Rains compounded the misery of millions of homeless victims a week after Pakistan’s worst earthquake and briefly grounded relief flights, while a fresh consignment of aid arrived from archrival India with much-needed medicine and tents.

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake jolted south Asia today, killing at least 21 people and injuring hundreds of others in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.

A KEY Taliban commander said that al-Qaida terror network chief Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar are both alive and in good health after more than three years on the run.

Six people were killed when a KFC restaurant was set on fire by a mob angry about a suicide attack on a Shiite mosque in Karachi, bringing the overall death toll to 11, police said today.

Rescue workers have recovered at least 80 bodies from surging waters in a remote south-west province of Pakistan, where heavy rains caused a large dam to burst, sending torrents of water through the streets and sweeping hundreds of people into the Arabian sea.

ASSAILANTS set off a powerful time bomb next to an army truck parked in a teeming outdoor market in southwestern Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 11 people and injuring more than two dozen others.

A suicide attacker detonated a huge bomb that ripped through a Shiite Muslim mosque in eastern Pakistan during Friday prayers, killing at least 22 people and injuring dozens.

Pakistan’s prime minister in waiting Shaukat Aziz survived an suicide attack on his motorcade today, police said.

A Tanzanian al-Qaida suspect wanted by the United States for the 1998 bombings at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania was giving “very valuable” information, Pakistan’s interior minister said today.

PAKISTAN has arrested Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian al-Qaida suspect wanted by the United States in the dual 1998 bombings at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the interior minister said last night.

Pakistan has arrested a Tanzanian al-Qaida suspect wanted by the United States on suspicion of helping in the deadly 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the interior minister said in Islamabad early Friday.

Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf and the nation’s prime minister today condemned the murder of two Pakistanis kidnapped in Iraq.

Pakistan’s president said junior army and air force personnel were involved in an assassination attempt against him in December and that the suspects have been captured.

The complete draw for the first and second qualifying rounds of the UEFA Champions League has been made today.