Veteran reporter Seymour Hersh, who unearthed the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war, says the West could now be on the verge of a major conflict with the Muslim world.

NEWS coverage of the departure of Steve Staunton as manager of Ireland’s soccer team was quite a spectacle. RTÉ was scathing about the supposedly “shambolic” way in which things were handled at the end.

THE journalist who exposed United States military atrocities in Vietnam and Iraq launched a scathing attack on US President George W Bush and warned his intentions towards Iran would end in catastrophe.

A bitter custody feud that saw actor Alec Baldwin lash out at his 11-year-old daughter in a leaked voicemail went hush-hush when a court commissioner ordered lawyers not to talk about the case and closed a hearing to the public moments after it began.

Hugh Thompson, a former US Army helicopter pilot honoured for rescuing Vietnamese civilians from his fellow soldiers during the My Lai massacre, died early yesterday. He was 62.

THE United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported yesterday.

THE US Government is facing fresh claims that Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials ignored warnings about the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

US DEFENCE Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorised the expansion of a secret programme encouraging physical coercion and sexual humiliation of prisoners to obtain intelligence in Iraq, a US magazine has claimed.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorised the expansion of a secret programme that encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of prisoners to obtain intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq, a US magazine claims.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday flatly denied that he had overruled US military planners on the war strategy in Iraq.