Chris Patten's comments represent ``a closing of ranks by the British establishment on Ireland-related issues,'' said Sinn Féin's Alex Maskey, commenting after the former Tory Minister and last British governor of Hong Kong added his voice this week to the current British government's attempt to pressurise Northern nationalists into accepting Mandelson's Police Act. Free article

Even in the sick moral universe inhabited by the British Army, and in its long and ignominious history of occupation, the retention of two killers, convicted of shooting a teenager in the back and branded as liars by a court, must be a new low. The possession of cannabis amongst army personnel is officially considered to be a worse crime than the taking of an Irish life. Free article

Sinn Féin Assembly member for Mid-Ulster, John Kelly, has raised concerns at the ``sectarian rhetoric'' used by the DUP's Willie McCrea in a local newspaper last week, just days before a Catholic school in Greenlough near Portglenone in County Antrim was torched by loyalists. Free article

Former republican prisoners Paul `Dingus' Magee, Angelo Fusco and Tony Kelly were in the High Court in Dublin on Wednesday morning, 29 November, for the first stage of proceedings to formally drop extradition warrants outstanding against them. Free article

Despite repeated denials by the British government, the Force Research Unit, the covert British Army unit at the centre of the collusion controversy, routinely engaged in illegal surveillance and espionage in the 26 Counties, it has emerged. Free article

A tape of the bugged conversations in Victoria and Ballykelly Barracks, at the time of Bloody Sunday, was suddenly ``found'' by the Garda Síochána, ten days ago, (Sunday 19 November), 25 years after it had been taken on a raid from Sinn Féin Councillor Jim Ferry's house in 1975. Free article

The Bloody Sunday Tribunal of Inquiry this week heard its first evidence from civilian witnesses. This evidence has related to events that happened before the Parachute Regiment entered the Bogside on 30 January 1972. Free article