Ireland 2 USA 0: Ireland will take aim at a place in the 2016 Olympics with confidence tomorrow after stunning world number five USA 2-0 in Valencia yesterday.

Captain Megan Frazer believes Ireland’s World League 2 performances show how far they have come under Darren Smith’s tutelage.

Loyalist activist Willie Frazer has said there are plans for another Love Ulster parade in Dublin in the new year.

It was bittersweet for the Irish on the final day of the European championships in Zurich as Paul Robinson and Ciarán Ó Lionáird had two conflicting reasons to rue the 1500m final while the men’s 4x400m relay ran another national record of 3:01.67 to place fifth.

IF you’re living or working in a big city, you may not be able to see the daily environmental aggressors, but their effects can manifest on your face.

Ireland’s women claimed Champions Challenge I silver for the first time, but gold eluded them as USA claimed a 3-1 final victory in Glasgow.

Well, it's the logical thing to do, isn't it?

Questionable spending involving more than €3.7m in grant aid has allegedly occurred in cross-border projects linked to the peace process.

Politicians in Northern Ireland today backed a motion which described a ban on a controversial Orange Order parade as “illogical”.

WE’VE shivered through the extra-long winter and now it’s time for the after-effects — dire heating bills and drab skin in need of some TLC.

A prominent loyalist campaigner involved in Union flag protests in Northern Ireland has been refused bail after being accused of encouraging or assisting offences.

St Johnstone 1 Celtic 1

High-profile Union flag demonstrator Willie Frazer has vowed he will not be intimidated by those responsible for an overnight arson attack on his home.

A car has been destroyed in an arson attack outside the home of the loyalist campaigner Willie Frazer in County Armagh.

THE Garda Siochana had a difficult and sensitive task to carry out in persuading Willie Frazer and his motley crew not to come to Dublin tomorrow to demand that the Irish flag be removed from Leinster House (where it wouldn’t be flying anyway because it doesn’t fly over the houses of the Oireachtas when the Dáil and Seanad are not sitting).

Loyalists look set to delay plans to stage a rally in Dublin in protest at the lowering of the union flag above Belfast City Hall.

It has been reported that Willie Frazer may be visiting Dublin to ask the Taoiseach to lower our national flag.

There are conflicting reports this evening on whether a planned protest march by loyalists in Dublin will go ahead.

A loyalist protest planned for Dublin this weekend has been called off. It is understood organisers agreed to cancel the demonstration after discussions with the Gardaí.

Gardaí have not received notification from the org-anisers of a controversial protest on the union flag issue, just days before a planned demonstration outside Leinster House.

To give the Irish people a sense of how loyalists feel at the decision of Belfast City Council to restrict the flying of the Union flag on City Hall to 17 designated days a year, loyalist activist Willie Frazer, in a planned protest by a group of about 150 loyalists due to take place outside Leinster House on Saturday next, will be asking for the Tricolour to be taken down.

An SDLP councillor, her husband and infant daughter were lucky to avoid injury last night after seven shots were fired at their home.

More than 150 loyalists are set to descend on Dublin next week demanding that the Government remove the Tricolour from Leinster House.

The sole survivor and victims of the IRA Kingsmill massacre are just as important as all other victims of the Troubles, the Taoiseach has insisted.

Kevin Phelan will look to carry momentum from his top-five finish at Carton House into the European Amateur Championships into this week’s Home Internationals.

A third-round, seven-under-par 65 from Sweden’s Pontus Widegren may have pushed hopes of a home win in the European Amateur Championship beyond leading Irish men Kevin Phelan and Alan Dunbar.

LOUISA HEALY and Megan Frazer will make their first international appearances in over 18 months later this month following their inclusion in Gene Muller’s panel for Ireland’s tour to South Africa.

MEGAN FRAZER looks set to answer Ireland’s call once more after being named as America’s best university field hockey player.

Ballymena took the spoils in a rain-hit Division 1B opener against UCC at the Mardyke where centre Alisdair Frazer scored the only try.

OIREACHTAS members will today quiz the head of a new department unit set up to replace the Combat Poverty Agency (CPA) about its priorities, amid concern over the “silencing” of the outgoing agency’s role.

THE body representing more than 100 civil society groups who act on behalf of the marginalised in society has warned that dissenting voices are being silenced amid fears any criticism of the Government will see a cut in their funding.

The US can no longer support a proposed Zimbabwean power-sharing deal that would leave Robert Mugabe, “a man who’s lost it,” as president, the top US envoy for Africa told reporters today.

A defiant Robert Mugabe today boasted that no other African country had the courage to remove him from power.

Shelly-Ann Frazer led home a Jamaican 1-2-3 to win the women’s 100m gold medal in a time of 10.78 seconds.

A RECOUNT of disputed legislative seats has confirmed opposition control of Zimbabwe’s parliament and should be completed today, allowing the release of results from last month’s presidential election, state media reported.

Results so far from a recount of disputed seats confirm the opposition’s majority in parliament, a government-run newspaper reported today as a top US envoy called for international intervention against state-sponsored violence.

Zimbabwe’s electoral commission has confirmed the results in 10 disputed parliamentary votes, making it unlikely that President Robert Mugabe’s party can wrest control from the opposition.

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader won the disputed presidential election outright, a top US envoy declared today.

The Bush administration is intervening with governments in southern Africa to prevent a Chinese ship carrying weapons for Zimbabwe’s security forces from unloading its cargo, officials said.

It is up to Africa to help Kenya resolve a dispute over elections that has sparked spiralling violence, the African Union chief said as the continent’s leaders converged in Ethiopia for a summit.

THE top US envoy to Africa called the violence in Kenya “ethnic cleansing” and said yesterday Washington was reviewing its hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the country.

Violent anti-government protests in Kenya’s Rift Valley are aimed at the ethnic cleansing of the Kikuyu tribe there, a diplomat claimed today.

Kenya’s president and his chief rival made key concessions to end the dispute over the country’s elections, calling off protests and agreeing to talks under pressure from the US as the death toll from a week of violence reached nearly 500.