The PSNI has defended the arrest of a Sinn Féin Assemblyman in connection with an IRA bomb attack in the Co Derry village of Claudy more than 33 years ago.

Police in the North have begun an internal criminal investigation into alleged corruption within the force.

An investigation was tonight under way into alleged contract corruption within Northern Ireland’s Police Service.

A man is to be charged with murdering the 29 people who died in the Omagh bomb atrocity, it emerged tonight.

A new team of detectives has been brought in to probe a loyalist paramilitary murder dogged by allegations of a police cover-up, it was revealed tonight.

A MAJOR crime gang is suspected of taking a woman hostage during a £1 million-plus raid on a cash delivery van in Belfast.

The IRA is still unlikely to carry out a major terrorist operation which would breach the organisation’s ceasefire but retained its capability, a senior policeman in Northern Ireland claimed today.

Hugh Orde will quit as Northern Ireland Chief Constable if his assessment of the IRA’s £26.5m (€38m) Belfast bank robbery is wrong, it was revealed tonight.

CHIEF Constable Hugh Orde will face fierce pressure to declare any IRA involvement in the £22 million Northern Bank raid when he is questioned about the heist for the first time, he was warned yesterday.

A SPECIAL Branch officer is to be questioned in a new twist to the police investigation into the Omagh bomb atrocity.

A Northern Ireland Special Branch officer is to be questioned in a new twist to the police investigation into the Omagh bomb atrocity, it emerged today.

Detectives were today stepping up the hunt to catch up to 20 raiders who pulled off one of the world's biggest ever bank robberies.

PARAMILITARY involvement in the £20 million heist in Belfast would have serious ramifications for the North's peace process, Justice Minister Michael McDowell said yesterday.

POLICE last night were refusing to rule out paramilitary involvement in Monday's daring raid on the Northern Bank in Belfast.

A gang who pulled off a spectacular £20m-plus (€29m) bank raid may have been working on inside intelligence.

The gang behind a £20m-plus (€29m) robbery on the Northern Bank’s Belfast headquarters planned it like a military operation.

The Irish Government was responsible for a 15-month delay in handing over DNA samples on Omagh bomb suspects to investigating detectives in the North, it was claimed tonight.

Republican paramilitaries carried out a £2m (€2.9m) cigarette heist in Belfast, police said today.

RELATIVES of victims of the Omagh bombing demanded a public inquiry to discover the truth yesterday — the fifth anniversary of the atrocity.

All police officers in Northern Ireland will be expected to work with fairness and integrity under a new human rights rule book launched today.

The father of a nine-year-old girl killed in the Claudy bombing today called on former Prime Minister Edward Heath and his Defence Secretary Lord Carrington to say what they knew about the atrocity.

The British Government and the Catholic Church were involved in an astonishing cover-up to shield a priest suspected of heading-up the IRA team responsible for one of Northern Ireland’s worst ever bomb atrocities, police claimed today.

The Northern Ireland Policing Board was meeting today to shortlist candidates for the North's second most senior post in law enforcement.

SINN FÉIN’S Martin McGuinness last night condemned a weekend gun attack on a bus driver in his home city of Derry which police believe was the work of the IRA.

POLICE investigating the murder of workman David Caldwell at a Territorial Army camp in Derry made two more arrests in the area yesterday.

Police were today continuing to question two men and a woman over a bomb attack on a Derry British territorial army base which killed a construction worker.

TWO men and a woman were last night being questioned by police after a construction worker was murdered in a bomb attack on a Derry Territorial Army base.

Two men and a woman have been arrested in connection with the murder of 51 year-old David Calwell on a building-site in Derry this morning.

The new head of the Omagh bomb investigation is to face tough questions from victims’ relatives when he meets them for the first time next week.