Enda Kenny should have faced an Oireachtas committee over the Callinan scandal, writes Michael Clifford

IN RECENT years there has been outrage following reports into clerical abuse, as well as the publication of the recent report into the behaviour at Magdalene Laundries.

Mitt Romney said the attack on the US consulate in Libya is an issue in the presidential campaign because Americans wonder why it took the Obama administration so long to acknowledge it was a terrorist act.

The family of murdered solicitor Pat Finucane has accused the British government of stalling on a decision to hold a public inquiry into one of the most infamous killings of the Troubles.

AN E COLI outbreak linked to contaminated cucumbers that has killed 14 people and made more than 300 seriously ill in Germany has spread to other north European countries and is expected to worsen in the coming week.

Barack Obama locked up enough Republican votes to ratify a new arms control treaty with Russia that will cap the former Cold War foes’ nuclear warheads and restart on-site weapons inspections.

The US government today apologised to Guatemala for a study 60 years ago in which American scientists deliberately infected prisoners there with syphilis.

BP engineers finally succeeded in keeping some of the oil gushing from a blown well out of the Gulf of Mexico, hooking up a mile-long tube to funnel it into a tanker after more than three weeks of failures.

CHELSEA CLINTON, the 29-year-old daughter of former US president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has become engaged to her longtime boyfriend, investment banker Marc Mezvinsky.

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave no ground on peace with the Palestinians in a speech yesterday, reasserting they must recognise Israel as a Jewish state if they wanted a deal for a state of their own.

President Mary McAleese will begin a week-long trip to the west coast of the United States tomorrow to strengthen trade, business and cultural links.

Charlie McCreevy had the courage to move a ‘no confidence’ motion in Charlie Haughey’s leadership in October 1982, but the great majority in the parliamentary party did not have the vision, the guts or the integrity to support his motion, so Haughey survived.

Actors Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright and members of a crew filming an Oliver Stone movie, were arrested during a bar fight, police said today.

Democrats in the US house of Representatives have pushed through a bill today, requiring President George Bush to start bringing troops home from Iraq with a goal of ending combat by next December.

North Korea and Syria today held high-level talks in Pyongyang, the North’s state media reported, amid suspicions that the two countries might be co-operating on a nuclear weapons program.

YESTERDAY was a double anniversary. Both relate to the birth date of short-lived minority governments. Each lasted for less than a year.

British steel maker Corus agreed to a £4.3bn (€6.4) takeover by Indian rival Tata Steel today – ending the UK company’s year-long search for a partner.

THE Taoiseach yesterday moved to clarify comments he made about the Catholic Church that were interpreted by opposition parties and victims’ organisations as a failure on his part to absorb the serious nature of the findings of the Ferns Report.

THE US Capitol building and White House were evacuated yesterday after a small plane entered the restricted airspace over Washington.

Iran said yesterday that a US military strike against it would be a strategic blunder, but brushed aside tough talk from Washington as psychological warfare rather than a real threat.

SPANISH Roman Catholic bishops have for the first time accepted the use of condoms to prevent AIDS, re-igniting a moral and religious debate but drawing a sharp response from the Vatican.

FORMER Taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald said he does not recall details of any Cabinet conversations about the Dublin/Monaghan bombings in the months following the atrocity.

RELATIVES of 33 people murdered in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings are relieved a date has been set for the inquests into their deaths and that they are due to finish before the 30th anniversary of the atrocities.

ALMOST one in three people who commit suicide suffer from a mental illness or have a family history of suicide or mental illness, research shows.

Christine Keeler, the woman at the centre of the Profumo scandal, claims she was made pregnant by the then Secretary of State for War.