An Irish man, 79, has died on pilgrimage in Italy.

Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (12A) is an epic tale of the greatest mass rescue of World War II, when 400,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force were left stranded and undefended on Dunkirk beach as the German army closed in for the kill.

An application to fly direct charters flights from Knock Airport to the US in 1986 was rejected by the Government over fears of the political backlash, as such a move would end the agreed Shannon stopover for all transatlantic flights from Ireland.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman says “irresponsible comments” and criticism from other countries against the kingdom’s handling of security during the hajj will not affect his country’s oversight of the annual Islamic pilgrimage.

Iran has blamed rival Saudi Arabia over the disaster at the hajj that killed more than 700 pilgrims, as Muslims solemnly resumed the final rites of the annual pilgrimage.

Muslim pilgrims are continuing with the final rites of hajj a day after more than 700 people died in a stampede.

A stampede killed at least 717 pilgrims and injured hundreds more on the outskirts of the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the deadliest tragedy to strike the annual hajj pilgrimage in more than two decades.

The first transatlantic pilgrimage flight to Knock Shrine will touch down in Co Mayo tomorrow.

A Galway man has claimed that his son has been given the all-clear from cancer two years after he was told the illness was terminal.

Thousands of people will experience the hidden places of beauty and peace along the pilgrim paths of Ireland over the Easter weekend.