One hundred years ago this week chemical weapons were used for the first time, opening up a new chapter in conflict. Ann Cahill talks to some of the troops still cleaning them up    

No need to get in a sweat over the price of the Christmas dinner. You can feed five people a delicious three-course meal for just under €25. Cork chef Donal Hayes tells how.

There has been some debate recently in the Irish media in regard to James Connolly’s position when the First World War broke out in Europe. Writing in the Worker’s Republic... published in the first week of the war, he made clear his and the newspaper’s position on the war.

GAA president Liam O’Neill has rejected Paul Grimley’s assertion that he, along with Director General Páraic Duffy and the media, influenced the decision to ban three Armagh players earlier this summer.

Karl Albrecht, the reclusive German businessman who became one the world’s wealthiest people after co-founding the Aldi discount supermarket chain in the 1960s, has died. He was 94.

I wish to bring some historical perspective to the hype of the D Day invasion:

If you’re heading to Marseille for Munster’s Heineken clash with Toulon, you’re in for a tourist treat with fine food and a proud history.

We don’t yet know what Putin’s real agenda is generally with Ukraine and specifically with Crimea. But it echoes the murky events that eventually led to the first global war, writes James G Neuger

Tune in tonight to see The People's Debate with Vincent Browne live on TV3 at 10pm.

Raging waters from three rivers have poured into the old town of Passau in south east Germany, one of the cities worst hit by the flooding that has spread across a large area of central Europe.

Relics of the German Third Reich were at the centre of a bidding battle in Limerick yesterday.

The German army can use force inside the country, but only in exceptional cases and as a last resort, the country’s top court said today.

DID Steven Spielberg really intend ET (1982) to be read as a Christ-like figure?

HERE are your options for a Stephen Molumphy interview.

Hitler’s attack on Russia on this day 70 years ago was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany, writes Geoffrey Roberts

Newly published this week.

SOME 12,150 German conscripts have started their military service as part of the last group that is obligated to serve six months in the military.

Germany is to end conscription next year and switch to a slimmed-down volunteer military service of 185,000 troops focused on missions abroad.

The German army has confirmed that pirates have seized a German freight ship off the coast of Kenya.

The Kaiser’s Holocaust

ROMAN soldiers in full battle gear will march on an historic city former jail at the weekend as part of a new living-history military show.

Freya von Moltke, a prominent member of the anti-Nazi resistance in the Second World War, has died at the age of 98, her son said.

THE German Defence Ministry last night said an army instructor’s order to a soldier to imagine being accosted by blacks in New York’s Bronx borough while firing a machine gun was “absolutely unacceptable”.

The German defence ministry today said an incident in which a German soldier was told to envision blacks in the Bronx while firing a machine gun was "absolutely unacceptable".

A GERMAN army instructor who ordered a soldier to envision himself facing hostile blacks in New York while firing his machine gun is still on duty, the army said yesterday.

A German army instructor who ordered a soldier to envision himself in New York City facing hostile blacks while firing his machine gun is still on duty, a spokesman for the army said today.

IT’S a prospect loaded with historical baggage: German troops joining a proposed international force in Lebanon to police the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

Pope Benedict XVI said he became convinced he should become a priest to help confront what he called the “anti-human culture” of the Nazis in his native Germany.

A massive explosion at a weapons dump near an airfield in northern Afghanistan killed five Afghans and two German soldiers, officials said today.

An emotional wreath-laying ceremony was held at the Soviet War Memorial in London today as the loss of 27 million soldiers and civilians from the former USSR in the Second World War was commemorated.

A prominent German neo-Nazi was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison today for leading a terrorist group that discussed attacking the dedication of a Munich synagogue.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder honoured Germany’s Nazi resistance today on the 60th anniversary of the most famous plot to kill Adolf Hitler.

Talks between the ISIC 21 consortium and the German Defence Ministry over a €6.5bn deal to modernise the armed forces' IT network have collapsed, a Ministry spokesman said.

Europe Correspondent

Prince Claus, the German-born husband of The Netherlands’ Queen Beatrix who charmed his adopted country with his irreverent wit, was being buried today with royal honours.