Turkey’s prime minister dismissed any suggestion Ankara should apologise for downing a Russian warplane in its airspace last week, after winning strong NATO support for the right to defend itself.

Richard N. Haass says the US has a strategic interest and a responsibility to help Europe contend with the expanding migrant crisis

The US plans to store heavy military equipment in the Baltics and Eastern European nations to reassure allies made uneasy by Russian intervention in Ukraine, and to deter further aggression, a senior US official said on Saturday.

Outgoing US defence secretary Chuck Hagel has said he is worried about a potential division within Nato as countries in the north want to focus on the growing threat from Russia, while other alliance members in the south are more worried about the influx of foreign fighters from northern Africa.

Latvian voters are casting ballots for a new Parliament in an election overshadowed by the Ukraine crisis and worries over how to deal with resurgent neighbour Russia.

Nato approved wide-ranging plans to boost its defences in eastern Europe, aiming to reassure allies nervous about Russia’s intervention in Ukraine that the US-led alliance will shield them from any attack.

Infrastructure investment is a huge business.

Russia will be the main focus of an extraordinary summit of EU leaders in Brussels today and is likely to play a role in who gets the Union’s top jobs for the coming five years.

RSA Insurance Group agreed to sell the insurance businesses of its branches in Singapore and Hong Kong to Allied World Assurance Co for about £130m (€163m) in cash as it retreats from markets.

For two weeks in 1992, a US team of NBA superstars spearheaded by Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson destroyed all before them at an Olympic Games notable for the fact that it was the first since the collapse of the Berlin War.

It’s almost 13 years since a basketball club was founded in the Carlow village of Ballon to cater for recreational female players aged 30 or over.

Science versus faith: a Euro conundrum

Lampedusa casts shame on us all

NEAR a former Soviet naval base and dilapidated Cold War-era housing estate, this 84-year-old Latvian plywood factory is the kind of success story of which EU policymakers dream as they struggle with economic meltdown in southern Europe.

Swedbank, the biggest lender in the Baltics, has bought AIB’s mortgage portfolio in Latvia, growing its business at a time when most European lenders are deleveraging.

To mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the former Soviet Union, Geoffrey Roberts reflects on what led to the collapse of the institution instigated by the Bolsheviks in 1922

The Russian owner of Portsmouth Football Club has been arrested in London in connection with a money laundering probe that has rocked Lithuania and Latvia, officials said today.

IT WAS the night we went to a football match and a party broke out. Or maybe it was the other way around.

WITH THAT sensational scoreline in Tallinn havingrendered tomorrow night’s second leg more of a testimonial than a test, Giovanni Trapattoni can already afford to look forward to the European Championship finals — and beyond.

KEITH ANDREWS, man of the match and scorer of that all important first goal in Tallinn on Friday, has revealed that the mood in the Irish camp afterwards bordered on the surreal.

The 2011 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet whose surrealistic works about the mysteries of the human mind won him acclaim.

BAD debt provisioning at National Irish Bank of €198 million in the first quart of this year is close to the total amount of €228m set aside last year.

But taking pride in the sheer size of your country is increasingly anachronistic.

The UK’s biggest brewer, Scottish & Newcastle, is expected to fall into foreign hands today after its £7.8bn (€9.9bn) takeover by rivals Heineken and Carlsberg.

The UK’s biggest brewer, Scottish & Newcastle, will fall into foreign hands tomorrow after its £7.8bn (€9.9bn) takeover by rivals Heineken and Carlsberg.

Shareholders of brewer Scottish and Newcastle will meet today to vote on a proposed £7.8bn (€9.8bn) takeover of the company.

Budweiser brewer Anheuser-Busch is considering making a counter bid for beer and cider group Scottish & Newcastle, according to a report today.

Takeover target Scottish & Newcastle today said it was considering how to oust suitor Carlsberg from its prized joint venture in the Baltics.

Russia’s security chief said Western spies were working to weaken and break up the country and singled out British agents as the most intrusive, according to an interview published today.

More than 100,000 cigarettes from the Baltics have been seized by customs officers at Dublin Airport.

The President, Mary McAleese, is beginning a four-day trip to the Baltics today, where she is visiting two of the EU's newest member states.

President Mary McAleese leaves Dublin today for a four-day trip to the Baltics.

Russian intelligence officials today claimed Western powers had given tacit consent to the Soviet Union’s 1940 occupation of the Baltic States, judging it a “necessary step” to counter Nazi aggression.

Police are searching for 20 fugitive convicts today, a day after they overpowered guards and escaped from a prison in northern Belgium, officials said.

Linfield 1 Gorica 3

FURTHER barriers to letting Europeans move freely around the European Union (EU) were removed recently when Justice Minister Michael McDowell adopted new EU legislation.

Hundreds of children planning to visit Santa Claus this Christmas have been told their trips will no longer go ahead after a tour operator was forced to call in administrators.

The European Commission said today it will investigate reports that the CIA set up secret jails in eastern Europe to interrogate al-Qaida captives.

PHIL HARRINGTON will always look back fondly on his dramatic call to arms against FK Ekranas in Thursday’s UEFA Cup tie, but the 41-year -old ‘keeper has no desire to continue deputising for the injured Michael Devine in the immediate future.

President Vladimir Putin, responding to growing calls for Russia to renounce the secret Soviet-Nazi pact that consigned the Baltic republics to Soviet rule, said Moscow condemned the deal long ago.

Russia today denied it illegally annexed the Baltic nations in 1940, rejecting demands from the three former Soviet republics that it admit having illegally occupied them during the Second World War.

US President George Bush said he will remind Russian President Vladimir Putin about the Soviet occupation of the Baltics when they meet in Moscow for the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe.