About 900 police have been placed on the southern side of the Irish border ahead of the G8 Summit at Lough Erne Resort in Co Fermanagh, Northern Ireland on June 17 and 18.

Radical plans to reform Ireland’s Senate have been proposed – including a vote for emigrants and Northern Irish and  parity for women in the upper house of the Irish parliament.

Timothy Noah Kaufman, a marine combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, was taken into custody on Wednesday 24 April in connection with the killing of a former Northern Ireland police officer and his girlfriend in 2011.

ScotlandDNA, an ancestry testing company, has recently discovered a DNA marker that strongly suggests that ten percent of Scotsmen are directly descended from the Picts, the Gaels’ fierce neighbors who battled the Romans.

A Northern Irish producer is among a group of five jailed for a $4.2 million tax fraud, which they attempted to cover-up by making the indie movie “A Landscape of Lies.” In a major plot twist the low-budget movie, with a B-list cast, went on to win an award at an American film festival before the scam’s cover was blown.

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, First Minister Peter Robinson and deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness joined a crowd of about 80 for the annual St Patrick’s visit to the White House. President Obama spoke of his upcoming trip to Ireland.

The Antrim native turned Hollywood royalty, Liam Neeson, admitted he would be interested in playing the controversial figure of Reverend Ian Paisley in a biographical movie.

A junior doctor from Northern Ireland and two Phd students were among four people killed in an avalanche in the Scottish Highlands, police said.

Inez McCormack, the internationally renowned human rights activist, has died (Monday 21 January 2013) following a short illness.
 
Inez was the founder and adviser to the pioneering, highly commended Participation and the Practice of Rights organization (PPR). PPR provides support to local disadvantaged communities and groups in using a rights based approach to change the social and economic inequalities and deprivation they face.

Postal workers intercepted a viable letter bomb addressed to a high ranking senior police officer in Northern Ireland.

The Chief Constable of the PSNI has apologized to nationalist residents in Belfast whose homes were attacked by loyalist protesters over the weekend.

It was all going so well wasn’t it? The power-sharing executive had not only succeeded in running the full term but also being re-elected with a strengthened mandate. So encouraging was the environment that it left room for old enemies to embrace as Martin McGuinness met Queen Elizabeth in June 2012 and Peter Robinson made major speeches arguing for a closer relationship with the Irish government along with seeking to encourage Catholics to vote for his Democratic Unionist Party. The Northern Ireland problem it appeared had been solved for good.

Police in the North have again come under attack from loyalist protesters after a Union flag demonstration turned ugly.

Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has confirmed that he has resigned from his role as MP for Mid-Ulster. McGuinness said the move was “in line with [his] party’s commitment to end double jobbing.”