It may be time to think the unthinkable. Donald Trump in the White House, not as a dinner time visitor in a tuxedo just passing through, but as full-time resident for the following four, perhaps eight years.

Daniel Day-Lewis has been named in a list of the best ever Oscar-winning performances in a biopic by Rolling Stone.

I have never believed in a hierarchy of respect and nobody, whether president or pauper, should ever be subjected to personal abuse.

Former finance minister Alan Dukes chastised then Taoiseach Garet FitzGerald over using taxpayer money to hand out gifts on overseas trips.

The death of former White House press secretary James Brady, who was shot in the head in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, has been ruled a murder.

The Obama administration has stepped up tensions with Russia, accusing Moscow of conducting tests in breach of a 1987 nuclear missile treaty.

Here are some things you may not know about the Academy Awards

THE longstanding Irish policy of neutrality, an ongoing balancing act of several competing pressures — nationalism, the post-colonial relation with Britain, a burgeoning involvement with European politics — came under particular scrutiny in 1983.

At the beginning of 1983, Irish ambassador Tadgh O’Sullivan believed it was going to be a decisive year for US President Ronald Reagan whose competency was being severely questioned both on the ideological and economic fronts.

In 2008, just before his 90th birthday, the United States gave Nelson Mandela a special present, striking him from a decades-old terror watch list and ending what US officials called “a rather embarrassing matter”.

THE date most closely associated with the Secret Service isn’t its founding, in 1865. It’s not 1902, when it assumed full-time protection of the president, following William McKinley’s assassination.

“Let’s face it,” reasoned Time Magazine, with its online readership on Monday, “It’s good to have the Irish back.”

President Barack Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney are embarking on a travel-heavy week through battleground US states, with both campaigns wrangling over unrest in the Middle East and who is best equipped to rejuvenate the economy.

The man who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan more than 30 years ago said he would like to be known as something other than a would-be assassin.

The man who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan more than 30 years ago said he would like to be known as something other than a would-be assassin.

The man who shot President Ronald Reagan appeared fixated during a visit to a bookshop last year on a bookshelf bearing titles on presidential assassinations and Reagan’s presidency, according to testimony at a court hearing.

President Barack Obama has appealed for public support to push Congress to avert an unprecedented default on America’s national debt as politicians worked on dual tracks to reach an elusive deal.

Barack Obama, will be the most heavily protected US president in history when he comes to Ireland on Monday, in contrast to a visit nearly 50 years ago, says TP O’Mahony

Muammar Gaddafi appealed directly to US President Barack Obama today to halt what the Libyan leader called “an unjust war” and wished Obama good luck in his bid for re-election next year.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan defended Muammar Gaddafi, calling the embattled Libyan leader a friend and Muslim brother who had lent the movement €5.6m over the years.

Libya has shrugged off the defection of foreign minister Musa Kusa insisting it is involved in “a struggle of a whole nation”.

FACING high unemployment and lukewarm public approval, President Barack Obama can take heart from history: At the same point in his presidency 28 years ago, Ronald Reagan was saddled with an approval rating much lower than Obama’s is now. And the unemployment rate then was a full percentage point higher.

The US Senate gave its blessing to an arms control treaty with Russia that reins in nuclear weapons, giving President Barack Obama a major foreign policy win in the closing hours of the post-election congress.

Spain placed striking air traffic controllers under military authority today and threatened them with jail terms in an unprecedented emergency order to get planes back in the skies and clear chaotic airports clogged with irate travellers.

TRIBUTES flowed from all quarters at the ploughing championships for the Irish Examiner’s Agribusiness Correspondent Ray Ryan whose colourful 48-year career in journalism is drawing to a close.

LAST Saturday I watched the senior football play-off game between Tipperary and Dublin. It was not a particularly great game, but it was much more interesting and exciting than any of the World Cup soccer matches. The Cork and Waterford Munster hurling final on Sunday also left the soccer in the shade.

THE US Coastguard says BP has been forced to remove a cap that was containing some of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

ALMOST 30 years ago – August 3, 1981 – more than 12,000 of America’s air traffic controllers walked off the job, setting off a chain of events that would change labour relations in America forever.

IT IS absurd to suggest in a democracy that any people should not have a right to express their opinions by voting.

This week much of Europe has been celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In time it could well be considered as one of greatest seminal moments in world history, akin to the impact of the French Revolution, which began with the fall of the Bastille in 1789.

US President Barack Obama said today that the US had lost "the greatest United States senator of our time".

MORE than 31 million Americans watched Michael Jackson’s public memorial on television, but mystery surrounded the whereabouts of his body yesterday and plans for his burial.

President Barack Obama offered a spirit of co-operation to America’s hemispheric neighbours at a summit, listening to complaints about past US meddling and even reaching out to Venezuela’s left-wing leader.

US President-elect Barack Obama called the late President Ronald Reagan’s widow, Nancy Reagan, to apologise for joking that she had held seances in the White House.

Former US First Lady Nancy Reagan has been taken to hospital in Los Angeles with a broken pelvis.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she’s excited about a landmark trip she will make to Libya today, becoming the highest-ranking American official to visit the North African country in more than a half-century.

The judge in an American obscenity trial has had to suspend the hearing after it emerged his personal website contained sexually explicit images.

THE Taoiseach was afforded a magnificent stage to wind up his political career with an address to a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday. He became only the 102nd foreigner to address the two houses together.

The Taoiseach’s speech yesterday had the potential for a monumental anticlimax.

Nancy Reagan had to spend the night in hospital after falling in her home in Bel-Air, California.

Poland has agreed in principle to allow the US to install a missile defence system on its soil.

A US postage stamp commemorating the late singer and actor Frank Sinatra will be issued next year, US Postmaster General John Potter said today.

Cuba's leader Fidel Castro claimed in comments published today that Cuba provided information to American officials that saved former US President Ronald Reagan’s life in 1984.