Former Conservative minister David Mellor told the Leveson Inquiry that French laws on privacy had not been to the “public benefit”.

The first Rugby World Cup was also in New Zealand (and Australia) and our own Donal Lenihan was Ireland captain. We asked him to rummage through the attic for memories and mementoes from a bygone era. This is what he found.

EVERYONE curses the taxman, but Romanian witches angry about having to pay up for the first time yesterday were using cat excrement and dead dogs to cast spells on the president and government.

Everyone curses the taxman, but Romanian witches angry about having to pay up for the first time are planning to use cat excrement and dead dogs to cast spells on the president and government today.

DNA tests confirmed Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was buried in a grave in Bucharest, lifting doubt over his burial place.

THE son of former Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu has sued a theatre for performing a play about his late parents, arguing he wants the “Ceausescu” trademark to be protected.

Forensic scientists exhumed the bodies of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena today at the request of the couple’s family.

HE HAD a tight grip on all aspects of his nation’s life but Romanian diplomats were anxious that their president Nicolae Ceausescu would not be outdone by rival communist leader Marshall Tito during a 90-minute stopover in Shannon during April, 1978.

THE remains of CJ Haughey have been well kicked around in the media, during the past few weeks, in a Mussolini/Ceausescu-style outflow of resentment and pent-up anger, particularly among the older generation of citizens who lived through the not-so-rare ould times when he was pre-eminent.

NOBODY captured that feeling quite like Roy Orbison: the end of a wonderful affair, the time when passion turns to ashes, the day that trust dies. His voice, capable of soaring into melancholy, was the perfect soundtrack for a broken heart.

When Harry Potter author JK Rowling saw a newspaper photo of a child in a caged bed in the Czech Republic almost two years ago, her initial instinct was to turn the page.

A Romanian court today denied a request by late communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s daughter to have her parents’ remains exhumed to ensure that authorities were telling the truth about the burial site.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, I suppose I should say. It’s never really clear when the anniversary of a government is — the current one, for instance, wasn’t voted in by the Dáil until June last year. But we have just passed the first anniversary of their election.

AS thousands of Iraqis took to the streets to celebrate the fall of Saddam Hussein, the United States was already sabre rattling in the next phase of its war on so-called rogue nations.

US led forces are liberating Baghdad and removing the Saddam Hussein regime “from its seat of power,” Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared tonight.

George W Bush says the courage of Romanians who toppled Nicolae Ceausescu should inspire others to tackle aggressive dictators such as Saddam Hussein.

Olympic gold medalist Nadia Comaneci has ended an 11-year journey to freedom when she took the oath to become a United States citizen.

A member of the firing squad which executed Nicolae Ceausescu says pictures of the event were faked.

Romania's communists want the body of former communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu exhumed so that he can be given a decent burial.