It was wet and damp as crowds gathered at Pier 54 in the heart of New York City on May Day in 1915.

The Cork Midsummer festival opens tonight, kicking off an eclectic mix of weekend fun that includes Elton John, vintage Formula One racing cars, and pirates.

TROPHY hunters have targeted the recently discovered German U-boat that sank off Roche’s Point in Cork during the First World War.

IT read like a script from a popular TV soap — neighbours from hell, late-night noise and a legal wrangle that threatened to turn nasty.

A RADIATION cloud drifted from an earthquake-stricken nuclear power plant toward Tokyo yesterday sparking panic in one of the world’s biggest and most densely populated cities.

Thailand’s globe-trotting, fugitive former leader Thaksin Shinawatra is no longer welcome in Germany and will be arrested if he returns there, according to the Thai foreign ministry.

Afghan police rescued a German aid worker who was snatched while dining with her husband at a restaurant in the capital Kabul, and arrested four suspected kidnappers in the sting operation today, officials said.

Hundreds of US-led troops have launched an offensive against al-Qaida and Taliban militants in eastern Afghanistan, while a bomb attack near the capital killed three German nationals, officials said today.

A German woman kidnapped in Iraq earlier this year has been released, but her son is still being held hostage, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said today.

UKRAINE has its own problems straightening out its newfound democracy between its western and Russian oligarchs, but it is also having to contend with a more protectionist European Union.

Irish Bishops today called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to pressure leaders of the G8, the world’s richest countries, to meet commitments they have already given on aid and debt relief.

Campaigners demanding fairer trade deals between Africa and Europe will take their protest to the streets of Dublin today.

THE German government’s role in the abduction of a 41-year-old unemployed shoe salesman by the CIA has been queried by the European Parliament.

The Danish ambassador and other embassy staff have temporarily left Syria because authorities have dropped security around them to an ”inadequate level”, the Foreign Ministry said today.

A suicide car bomb exploded outside a children’s hospital in western Baghdad today, killing at least two people and wounding 11 including seven policemen.

SUSANNE Osthoff, the German woman taken hostage in Iraq, was freed last night.

A MIRACLE, a tragedy, life and death — the drama that unfolded on Main Street, Carrigaline, Co Cork, yesterday left many in tears, most in shock, and a town in grief.

Nelson Mandela today cancelled a meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, raising questions about the state of the former South African president’s health.

AIDAN LEAHY’S family will make an emotional trip to London this morning to be reunited with him after his four-week kidnap ordeal in Iran.

Armed with rifles, Baghdad residents beat up looters and blockaded Baghdad streets today in an attempt to quell the pillaging and lawlessness running rampant in the Iraqi capital.

Looting surged and buildings were set on fire across Baghdad today while American troops focused more on fighting pockets of resistance than on keeping order.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer’s visit to Israel, the first by a senior European official since the new Sharon government was installed last month, began with a snub today.

A COALITION of Irish anti-tobacco agencies yesterday accused Germany of siding with the tobacco industry to obstruct an international agreement on smoking.

The Irish Cancer Society, the Irish Heart Foundation and ASH Ireland are due to deliver a letter of protest to the German Embassy in Dublin later today.

The Russian passenger jet that collided in mid-air with a cargo plane last night over southern Germany was carrying 44 children, it has emerged.

Scores of people are feared dead after a Russian passenger jet with dozens of people on board and a cargo plane collided over southern Germany.

The term ‘‘krauts’’ may be regarded as ‘‘light-hearted’’ by advertising watchdogs, but Germans said today that they find it offensive.

All 15 hostages abducted by Tajik gunmen on Friday have now been released.