A private financier received a 10-year prison sentence Friday for handling millions stolen from Northern Bank in Belfast, a record-setting robbery that overshadowed Northern Ireland’s peace process for years.

Ireland’s police force says 15 masked men armed with steel pipes, chains and nail-studded clubs have ransacked a Shell pipeline project.

The leader of Ireland’s 4 million Roman Catholics, Cardinal Sean Brady, and representatives of Northern Ireland’s major anti-Catholic paramilitary group announced Monday they will meet soon to discuss the outlaws’ potential disarmament.

Cars torched, firefighters attacked, police bombarded and neighbors terrified: It’s been another fine St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland, where inebriated mobs annually turn certain districts of Dublin and Belfast into a St. Patrick’s nightmare.

An estimated 500,000 Irish people, immigrants and tourists jammed into Dublin’s city center Tuesday to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, a boisterous national holiday that has been darkened this year by recession and violence.

An estimated 500,000 Irish people, immigrants and tourists lined up along a parade route in Dublin on Tuesday to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day _ a national holiday dimmed this year by an economic recession and rising violence.

Irish airline Aer Lingus Group PLC said Wednesday that record costs for fuel pushed it to a 2008 full year net loss, which it said would deepen in 2009 as demand evaporated amid Ireland’s recession.

Police recovered millions in stolen cash and were interrogating seven suspected robbers Saturday, a day after a gang took a bank employee’s family hostage and forced him to rob his own branch.

Is a bathroom an optional extra when you’re at 30,000 feet? Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary seems to think so _ and says his no-frills airline might charge customers to use its aircrafts’ toilets.

The Russian navy finally admitted Friday it caused an oil slick off Ireland’s southwest coast _ 12 days after European and Irish marine authorities first spotted the threat and linked it to the Russians’ breakdown-prone aircraft carrier.