Nationalists and republicans have slammed the British government's decision to issue a new type of plastic bullet, another rejection of the Patten Report, which recommended the use of plastic bullets should be ``discontinued as soon as possible''. Free article

The Brannigan family were in bed and asleep when the front door of their Kilcoo home was smashed open with a sledgehammer and a man armed with a machine gun ran upstairs. On the top landing the man put the gun to Peter Brannigan's head and shouted, ``don't move or I'll blow you're fucking head off.'' Free article

Demonstrators, including Sinn Féin's Daithí Doolan, gather to defend freedom of assembly outside Monday evening's Dublin City Council meeting Free article

The judicial review of a British Army board's decision to retain the killers of 18-year-old Belfast man Peter McBride in the British Army began on last Thursday 29 March in the High Court in Belfast. Free article

Two RUC officers who knew a loyalist gang was about to kill but did nothing to thwart the death squad who shot dead Belfast defence lawyer Pat Finucane in 1989 are to be charged with withholding information. The two facing charges are believed to be the Special Branch handlers of William Stobie, the UDA quartermaster who supplied and disposed of the weapons used in the assassination. Free article

Driving down a local laneway on Saturday morning at Rampark, near Jenkinstown, County Louth, where tragically all the livestock have been culled, Sinn Féin Councillor Arthur Morgan saw belching black smoke, investigated, and found it to be a `portable incinerator'. Free article