ON July 20, 1969, thousands of people across Ireland sat watching grainy black and white images of men taking their first steps on the moon.

A scientist working at the giant European CERN atom smasher laboratory has been held on suspicion of being linked to al-Qaida, it emerged today.

IN all the excitement of the switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider nobody mentioned that Ireland is one of the few European countries which isn’t a member of CERN — the European organisation for nuclear research.