The appointment of a police widow as the North’s interim victims’ commissioner was designed to placate the DUP, a report confirmed today.

Negotiators from the two chambers of the US Congress reached an agreement today to extend the Patriot Act, the government’s premier anti-terrorism law, before its major provisions expire at the end of the month.

US MARINES forced Iraqi youngsters to kneel while troops discharged a weapon in a mock execution, used electric shocks on one prisoner and set fire to a puddle of solvent that burned one of them, according to US Navy documents.