BRITAIN’S intelligence services may have masterminded an IRA human bomb strategy which killed soldiers and civilians in the North in 1990, a lobby group claimed yesterday.

Today’s IRA statement insisting Jean McConville was an informer has caused more pain to her family, her daughter said tonight.

A GARDA detective sergeant who helped foil a string of Real IRA terror attacks in the mid-1990s and a key player in the Morris Tribunal is to stand trial today for illegal possession of a gun.

A son of the North's Police Ombudsman is recovering in hospital after he was beaten during an assault in north Belfast this morning.

THE man responsible for overseeing the setting up of the new three-person police Ombudsman Commission here last night said some of their powers were “nonsense” because they would have to get permission to enter a garda station.

The killers of Belfast father-of-two Robert McCartney were today branded cowards by Gerry Adams for failing to face up to what they had done.

THE father of a loyalist paramilitary murder victim has criticised unionist political representatives over their comments on the Robert McCartney murder.

The SDLP has lodged a formal complaint with the North’s Police Ombudsman over the policing of a loyalist parade in Lurgan, Co Armagh, on July13.

The North’s Police Ombudsman has ruled that the PSNI was fully justified in firing 33 plastic bullets at rioters in north Belfast in May 2002.

The North’s Police Ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, has launched an investigation into the controversial murder of a Catholic RUC officer in Cushendall, Co Antrim, 27 years ago.

The North’s Police Ombudsman has ruled that the PSNI was right to fire nearly 30 plastic bullets during rioting in the Short Strand area of east Belfast in August 2002.

The North’s Police Ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan, has severely criticised the RUC’s investigation of a 1997 murder in Co Derry.

The North’s Police Oversight Commissioner has claimed that policing reforms in the North are under serious threat due to a campaign of intimidation by dissident republics.

Justice Minister Michael McDowell has held two-and-a-half hours of talks with the families of the victims of the 1998 Omagh bombing.

A Sinn Fein activist has vowed to complain to the North’s Police Ombudsman after his hand was broken while he was filming police actions in east Belfast at the weekend.

THE North’s Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan is to be asked to investigate the police handling of interfaith violence in a flashpoint area of east Belfast, Sinn Féin chairman Mitchel McLaughlin revealed yesterday.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has said that the report into allegations that the gardaí withheld an advance warning of the Omagh bomb from the RUC must be made public.

Ulster Unionist Ken Maginnis has fired the latest salvo in an extraordinary war of words with the office of the North’s Police Ombudsman.

A spokesman for a group of former British spies has said the North’s Police Ombudsman has evidence that the RUC was aware of the Omagh bomb plot two days before the atrocity claimed 31 lives.