A rising number of attacks against government sites and industrial control systems shows the need for ever-greater vigilance by national authorities, writes Peter Apps

At least 730 US military flights came through Shannon Airport last year, anti-war campaigners have claimed.

The Pentagon is moving to increase the number of American troops in Iraq in the wake of new strikes that killed the Islamic State's finance minister and other top leaders of the terror group.

In a story that seems to be a cross between Castaway and Homeward bound, Luna was out sailing with her owner when she disappeared.

TAIWAN:  Budai, a township in southwest Taiwan, is building a church in the form of a giant high-heeled shoe, made of metal and blue glass tiles, seeking to attract more tourists to the area.

Hundreds of Nepali troops yesterday searched for a missing US Marine helicopter with eight people on board, a day after a second powerful earthquake in less than three weeks killed more than 60 people.

A decorated retired Marine whose career as a sniper was derailed by a video which showed him urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan has died, his lawyer has said.

Check out our spoiler-free guide to what’s good to watch on TV tonight.

THE longstanding Irish policy of neutrality, an ongoing balancing act of several competing pressures — nationalism, the post-colonial relation with Britain, a burgeoning involvement with European politics — came under particular scrutiny in 1983.

Within hours of President John F Kennedy’s assassination, most Americans were familiar with the name Lee Harvey Oswald. Certain images of him — posing with a rifle, recoiling from Jack Ruby’s gun — have been ingrained in memory. Yet he remains an enigma.

Workers in the typhoon-shattered city of Tacloban buried scores of unidentified bodies in a hillside mass burial as desperately needed aid began to reach some of the half-million people displaced by the disaster.

US military personnel are turning to liposuction to remove excess fat from around the waist so they can pass a Pentagon fitness test.

The defence contractor who fatally shot 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard was carrying three weapons during the rampage.

Three people, including the gunman, have been killed in a shooting at Marine Base Quantico in the US state of Virginia, a base spokesman said.

A British backpacker who went missing in the Australian Outback for more than three days survived by drinking contact lens solution and his own urine, his mother said.

“So, who’s stoked about being in Dublin?” The response said it all. “Wooo-hooo!”

Sergeant Brandon Morgan didn’t expect to become a global phenomenon when he kissed his partner upon returning to the US from a six-month deployment to Afghanistan.

The US Marine Corps once again did damage control after a photograph surfaced of a sniper team in Afghanistan posing in front of a flag with a logo resembling that of the Nazi SS - the special unit that murdered millions of Jews, gypsies and others.

A US Marine accused of killing unarmed Iraqi women and children has pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty in a deal that ends the largest and longest-running criminal case against US troops to emerge from the war.

THERE is something of the old school Hollywood celebrity to Leonardo DiCaprio.

THE US Marines have identified the unit whose forces are suspected of being behind a video appearing to show them urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban in Afghanistan, according to a Marine officer.

The US Marine Corps said it is investigating a video depicting what appears to be four Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters.

Film star Mila Kunis has made good on her promise to a US marine who had been serving in Afghanistan.

Marines fired rifles at a South Korean civilian plane as it was descending to land after mistaking it for a North Korean military aircraft, an airline official said today.

A CONTINGENT of the US Marine Corps known as “The Wild Geese”, will compete in the inaugural international festival of hurling at Semple Stadium, Thurles on July 8 and 9.

A lawyer has protested after a US Army private suspected of giving classified material to WikiLeaks was forced to sleep naked in his cell at a Marine Corps prison near Washington.

ACTOR Tony Curtis’s life could have come straight from one of his Hollywood scripts: rising from the streets of the Bronx to become a matinee idol who boasted of sleeping with 1,000 women.

A SENATE bill to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was headed for defeat last night, a major setback for gay groups which saw the vote as their last chance this year to overturn the 17-year-old ban.

US marines stormed a pirate-held ship off the Somalia coast today and took nine prisoners.

A WOMAN branded “Britain’s most disgusting person” walked out of court yesterday before she could be sentenced for urinating on a cenotaph.

Nato admitted accidentally killing at least 27 Afghan civilians today, the third attack this month to have hit the wrong target.

Troops raised the Afghan flag in the bullet-ridden main market of the Taliban’s southern stronghold of Marjah today as fighting continued elsewhere in town.

Sniper teams attacked US Marines and Afghan troops across the Taliban haven of Marjah in Afghanistan as several gun battles erupted on the third day of a major offensive to seize the extremists’ southern heartland.

An American defence contractor said today it would stop stamping bible references on combat rifle sights sold to the US Army and Marines and the Australian and New Zealand military.

Thousands of US Marines and hundreds of Afghan troops poured into villages of southern Afghanistan with armour and helicopters today in the first major operation under President Barack Obama's strategy to stabilise the country.

A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest and "lying in wait" killed three officers responding to a domestic disturbance call, turning a quiet street into a battlefield.

US president-elect Barack Obama visited US military families while they ate Christmas dinner, thanking them for their service and posing for pictures.

Four Royal Marines killed in Afghanistan were mourned today as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke of his “disgust and horror” at a new Taliban terror tactic.

Rebels trying to topple President Idriss Deby today attacked a town in eastern Chad where thousands of refugees are taking shelter.

The US Marine Corps is expelling one soldier and disciplining another for their roles in a video showing a lance corporal throwing a puppy off a cliff while on patrol in Iraq.

A military jury acquitted a US Marine intelligence officer of charges that he tried to help cover up the killings of 24 Iraqis, including women and children.

Two US Marine officers in a unit accused of firing indiscriminately at vehicles and pedestrians and killing as many as 19 Afghan civilians in 2007 will not face criminal charges, the military said.