Ryle Dwyer looks back 30 years to Garret Fitzgerald’s St Patrick’s Day State visit to the White House, and its impact on the Northern peace process

Beyonce won top honours at MTV’s Video Music Awards in New York, and rapper Drake professed his “love” for Rihanna, who collected a lifetime achievement award.

British, French, and German leaders and bureaucrats realised after World War II that only an economically stable ‘United States’ of Europe would guarantee peace, says Kyran Fitzgerald.

Donald Trump’s claim that former US president Bill Clinton was ‘the worst abuser of women in the history of politics’ shows just how politically ignorant he is, says historian Ryle Dwyer.       

Seventy years after his speech on the Cold War, Churchill’s words still linger writes Geoffrey Roberts.

Tomorrow is the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, which killed 70,000. Geoffrey Roberts looks at how and why we ushered in the age of the megaton bomb.

Harry S Truman, US president in the late 50s, is credited with not only using the phrase ‘the buck stops here’ but also having a sign on his desk with that phrase on it, writes Paul Mills. 

GEORGE Best is sitting up in a hotel bed with a gorgeous blonde beside him, when the waiter arrives with a bottle of vintage champagne. The waiter looks at the former soccer star and asks: “George, where did it all go wrong?”

President Barack Obama said he has heard the message from voters who put Republicans in power in the US Senate and extended their majority in the House of Representatives in a mid-term election that was a clear repudiation of his leadership.

The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared ****

Sport 2 (Hawking, Cent) Rest of the World 1 (Barton OG)

In his final article on the 70th anniversary of the American Note, Ryle Dwyer says an apparent intelligence leak from Ireland was part of a plan to deceive German diplomats.

Tom Hanks and his wife argue over who loves each other more.

KICKBACK CITY is a Rory Gallagher album with a difference. Joining him in the band for this one is the crime fiction writer Ian Rankin, the actor Aidan Quinn and cult illustrator Timothy Truman.

One Night in Winter

Crime writer Ian Rankin has penned a novella inspired by the music of guitarist Rory Gallagher.

Scarlett Johansson is set to make her directorial debut.The 'Avengers' actress will step behind the camera for the very first time to direct 'Summer Crossing', an adaptation of Truman Capote's first novel.

Mornings like these, when reader has a few precious hours advantage on the writer, you have to feel for Pat Maloney.

"I do not believe that a child can be reformed by lock and key and bars, or that fear can ever develop a child’s character."

You have to give writer-director Drew Goddard full marks for effort.

FORMER US President Harry Truman once explained: “My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. To tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference. I, for one, believe the piano player job to be much more honourable than current politicians.”

The US’s Afghanistan war commander General Stanley McChrystal has been called to the White House after President Barack Obama rebuked him for “poor judgement” and considered whether to fire him.

THE present state of disillusionment with politics is the worst I have witnessed. In this week’s public opinion poll, the Government satisfaction rating was a mere 12%, which is the lowest I can remember in any democracy.

AFGHANISTAN said yesterday it hoped the newly named commander of US and NATO troops would do more to avert civilian deaths, which had soured relations under outgoing commander General David McKiernan.

BARACK OBAMA’S first test as president came as he was being sworn in. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, got the presidential oath wrong.

PUBLIC opinion polls in the United States seem to suggest it is all over bar the shouting. If Barack Obama does not win on Tuesday, it will be the biggest surprise since Harry Truman retained the Presidency exactly 60 years tomorrow.

ONE week into the US general election race, the polls show a dead heat. But many US presidential scholars doubt that John McCain stands much of a chance, if any.

President George W Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history, according to a new poll.

MANY people have been comparing Barack Obama with John F Kennedy, and they are also comparing his wife, Michelle, with Jackie Kennedy.

MARGARET TRUMAN, the only child of President Harry S Truman and wife Bess, who became a concert singer, actress, radio and TV personality and mystery writer, died yesterday.

Tom Hanks will never direct another movie, because it would meaning spending too much time away from his family.

FORMER FBI director J Edgar Hoover drew up a list of thousands of US citizens he suspected of being disloyal and put forward a plan to have them arrested, newly declassified papers reveal.

ACCORDING to Mr Con Hayes (The Irish Examiner Letters, March 1). scientist Professor Philip Walton and engineer Frank Turvey, members of the Better Environment with Nuclear Energy group, face a “moral dilemma” in their advocacy of nuclear power as the solution to Ireland’s energy problems.

Tom Hanks has opened up about cheating on his first wife, admitting having an affair while he was married was "nothing to celebrate".

RENEWED attempts to justify the atom bombing of two Japanese cities, sixty years ago this month, have a lot in common with the Holocaust deniers.

JOHN DEMPSEY (Dan Morrissey Carrick Wheelers) pounced six miles from the finish to claim the overall title as the Killorglin Credit Union Rás Mumhan drew to an exciting close yesterday after four days and 270 gruelling miles around the roads and mountains of Kerry.

THE longest-running US senator, Strom Thurmond has died at the age of 100. He was in the Senate for 48 of his 100 years.

By Ryle Dwyer

WHEN Adolf Hitler shot himself in Berlin on April 30, 1945, the United States was at the height of its power.

Oscar-winner Tom Hanks says he’s not letting his young kids see his screen performance as a gun-toting mobster in Road to Perdition because it’s too violent.