John Hume wanted to have talks with the IRA Army Council in what senior government officials thought was a plan for a public and damaging confrontation.

Hewlett-Packard is splitting into two companies, using a breakup to become nimbler after failing to keep up with the shift away from the printing and personal computing businesses it pioneered.

An IRA prison escapee pardoned by Margaret Thatcher’s government has said she was a pragmatist whose ministers made small concessions as part of dealings with Ireland.

Willie Mullins has sounded a cautious note about a potential Stan James Champion Hurdle bid for the exciting Un De Sceaux.

After Rachel Frederickson won the latest season of The Biggest Loser, having shed nearly 60% of her body weight, attention wasn’t focused on her $250,000 (€185,000) win — but rather the criticism surrounding her loss.

Margaret Thatcher voiced concern that a 1989 report into the Hillsborough disaster constituted a “devastating criticism” of police, previously-unpublished Cabinet papers revealed today.

Wall Street was in shock today after the chief executive of technology giant Hewlett-Packard was forced to resign over claims of sexual harassment and fiddling expenses to hide a secret relationship with a former contractor.

A 15-truck pile-up on a rain-slicked southern California freeway left 10 people injured, at least one missing and severed a key transit link between Los Angeles and San Francisco, authorities said.

Oliver Wilson believes he has made good progress from his last play-off defeat after suffering the same heartache at the Johnnie Walker Classic in Phuket on Sunday.

South Africa’s Richard Sterne takes a one-shot lead over England’s Oliver Wilson into the final round of the Johnnie Walker Classic in Phuket after carding an eight under par round at the Blue Canyon Country Club.

England’s Oliver Wilson opened up a two-shot lead over South African Anton Haig at the halfway point of his third round in the Johnnie Walker Classic in Phuket.

HEWLETT-PACKARD, the world’s largest printer maker and the No 2 seller of personal computers, said third-quarter profits fell 88% after expenses from bringing earnings back from overseas and firing workers.

TONY BLAIR has agreed this week to move British forces closer to trouble spots near Baghdad so that George W Bush would not have to commit more US troops to Iraq in the closing days of his re-election campaign.

Vanitta Kinard’s story is just one of triumph over adversity at the US Olympic trials, reports Simon Lewis.

By Noel Whelan IN 1997 the former British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, now Lord Hurd, made a series of TV documentaries for the BBC called 'The Search for Peace.'