The body that rules on disputed parades in the North Ireland today stood by its decision to allow a republican protest near the route of an army homecoming event.

THE Garda Ombudsman Commission has hit out at the Garda Representative Association (GRA) for comments it made about the watchdog in its official journal.

GARDAÍ have a “total inability” to apologise to people when they make genuine mistakes, the head of a Garda watchdog said yesterday.

TWO soldiers at the centre of a peacekeeping scandal where they taunted civilians with their guns are to be questioned in the coming weeks.

SOME vital points regarding 1916 have been totally ignored not only by official Ireland, including all sides of the Dáil, but in the media and among the clergy.

British government promises to scale down security along the border must be implemented despite calls for freight lorries to be protected, SDLP Assembly member Dominic Bradley said today.

DENIS THATCHER, husband of Margaret Thatcher and her faithful consort throughout her premiership, died yesterday in the Lister Hospital, London. He was 88.

The Royal Irish Regiment will not be scrapped in Northern Ireland until all paramilitary violence has ended, British army chiefs insisted today.

THE Royal Irish Regiment is to be scrapped as part of a major plan to cut troop numbers in the North.

The Royal Irish Regiment is to be axed in Northern Ireland as part of a major plan to cut troop numbers there, it emerged tonight.

The British government faced new pressure today to reveal plans for troop reductions in Northern Ireland amid claims all Royal Irish Regiment battalions were to be disbanded within the next three years.

Britain’s most senior frontline officer on Bloody Sunday today denied that 13 unarmed civilians were killed because the British army was trying to make his suggestion to shoot rioters into a reality.

The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland at the time of Bloody Sunday did not believe Army claims immediately afterwards that they had shot dead terrorists on the civil rights march in Derry, it was disclosed today.

As he left the tribunal Lord Kilclooney refused to comment on his remarks that 13 gunmen were killed on Bloody Sunday

Northern Ireland Secretary Dr John Reid is preparing for briefings on the security situation in the province on his first day in his new post.