Leaving Certificate French exams were on the morning timetable for students yesterday and featured many topical issues.

Wealthy people simply cannot understand why their business affairs should be put under the microscope, even when the conduct of those affairs impinges to a great degree on the public interest, writes Kyran Fitzgerald.

FIFTY years ago last month, when Martin Luther King led thousands of non-violent protestors across the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma to Montgomery, the civil rights movement was born out of a vicious police onslaught on the demonstrators amid what began as a campaign for votes for African Americans. 

Barack Obama says the US would “walk away” from nuclear talks with Iran if there’s no acceptable deal.

Thousands of people have gathered in Selma, Alabama, ahead of a speech by President Barack Obama at the 50th anniversary of a landmark event of the civil rights movement.

Parts of Donal Óg Cusack’s RTÉ’s documentary make for uncomfortable viewing, writes Michael Moynihan.

The decomposed bodies of five children aged between two and eight were found stuffed into rubbish bags near a logging road in Alabama after their father confessed to killing them and led police to the scene, authorities said.

Alexandra Morton, the David Suzuki Foundation and others have been fighting penned salmon farms along the west coast of British Columbia, Canada.

More than two million people across the eastern US lost power after violent storms and five people died, including a 90-year-old woman asleep in bed when a tree slammed into her home, police have said.

A man accused of killing three people at a party near a US university turned himself after a three-day manhunt that included a tense but fruitless search of a home by police tactical units.

Three members of one family were killed when a tornado hit a home in central Alabama, officials said.

Behind The Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed A Nation

THIS weekend I was in Camelot – bet you thought it was an imaginary place. In real life Camelot is in beautiful, verdant Somerset.

A gunman who took hostages at the Discovery Channel's headquarters in the US has been shot dead by police.

A US state’s attorney general is suing BP and others over the Gulf oil spill because he said the company broke too many promises about accepting responsibility.

I HAVEN’T been to Wales for so long, I’d forgotten how easy it is to get there. Just throw a few things into the car, pack a picnic and head for Rosslare.

A BRUISED and starving seven-year-old girl walking alone on a gravel road led investigators to an even grimmer discovery: remains in a basement freezer that her adoptive mother said were the youngster’s sisters.

FORMER Olympic sprinter Tim Montgomery has been sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison for his role in a cheque-fraud scheme.

A murderer scheduled to die in what would have been America’s first execution in months won a last-minute reprieve today from the US Supreme Court.

IT was more like a scene from an episode of ER than one from a real-life hospital in a small college town.

US President George Bush will tomorrow visit areas hit by a tornadoes that have killed at least 20 people in several American states, including eight students at an Alabama high school.

A New York man who was fired by IBM for visiting an adult chat room at work is suing the company for $5m (€3.8m), claiming he is an internet addict who deserves treatment and sympathy.

GARDAÍ are investigating the theft of a container and almost €70,000 worth of Irish Knights Cream Liquor from Dublin Port.

Washington sniper John Muhammad will be sentenced in Maryland today, after being convicted of another six killings.

LEE Boyd Malvo testified yesterday that his former partner and father figure, John Allen Muhammad, told him before the 2002 sniper attacks in the Washington DC area: “We’re going to terrorise this nation.”

The Alabama Legislature has given final approval to a bill that sets up a process to pardon US civil rights icon Rosa Parks and hundreds of others arrested for violating segregation-era laws.

The crash site of a missing US Navy jet with four aviators aboard has been found, but none of the passenger’s survived the crash, US Air Force Special Operations Command spokesman Matt Durhan said today.

A soaring rendition of The Lord’s Prayer moved thousands of mourners at the funeral of US civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks today, with a preacher bidding: “Mother Parks, take your rest.”

Rosa Parks’ body has been returned to the city she called home, with thousands waiting in a line more to pay their final respects to the US civil rights leader.

MORE than 30,000 Americans streamed through the US Capitol Rotunda to pay tribute yesterday to Rosa Parks, filing by her casket in hushed awe of the woman whose defiant act on a city bus inspired the modern civil rights movement.

ROSA PARKS, the seamstress whose act of defiance on a public bus a half-century ago helped spark the US civil rights movement, will join presidents and war heroes who have been honoured in death with a public viewing in the Capitol Rotunda.

NEARLY 50 years ago, Rosa Parks made a simple decision that sparked a revolution. When a white man demanded she give up her seat on an Alabama, bus, the then 42-year-old seamstress said no.

Rosa Lee Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern US civil rights movement, died at age 92.

In the end, it wasn’t a fingerprint or a blood spatter that led authorities to the woman suspected of strangling a mother-to-be and cutting the baby from her womb.

ETLAALA has been installed a short-priced favourite to maintain his unbeaten record in the Darley Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket on Saturday.

The future of sprinters Tim Montgomery and Chryste Gaines will be decided within the next few weeks after the Court of Arbitration set a date for their drug offence hearings.

International rugby latest:

International rugby latest:

International rugby latest:

International rugby latest:

TIM MONTGOMERY’S lawyer, Cristina Arguedas, yesterday said the world number one will fight any attempt to ban him from the Olympics after it was revealed the sprinter had been notified by the US Anti-Doping Agency that he has been reported for drug violations.

Tim Montgomery’s lawyer, Cristina Arguedas, has stated that the world number one will fight any attempt to ban him from the Olympics after it was revealed the sprinter had been notified by the US Anti-Doping Agency that he has been reported for drug violations.

A JUDGE rejected John Allen Muhammad's insistence of innocence and sentenced him to death, saying his actions in the Washington-area sniper shootings that left 10 people dead were "so vile that they were almost beyond comprehension".

US president George Bush has released his Vietnam-era military records, in a bid to calm a political storm and to counter Democrats’ suggestions that he shirked his duty in the Texas Air National Guard.