Trimble cancels Israel visit as woman killed in Portadown

Saturday/Sunday

Loyalist extremists were blamed for the killing of a 59-year-old woman, who died after a pipe-bomb was thrown through a window of her home on the loyalist Corcrain estate in Portadown on Saturday. Mrs Elizabeth O'Neill was a Protestant, married to a Catholic. The North's First Minister, Mr David Trimble, cancelled a planned trip to Israel because of the killing and described it as an attempt to derail efforts to resolve the Drumcree Church parade crisis. A military funeral took place in Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo of Pte William Kedian, who was killed by mortar fire from an Israeli lookout position in southern Lebanon.

Monday

Ireland's triple Olympic swimming champion, Michelle de Bruin, failed in her appeal against a four-year ban imposed last summer by FINA, the sport's governing body. The Court of Arbitration for Sport, in Lausanne, Switzerland, upheld the ban for tampering with a drugs test.

The Republic is now the second most expensive place in Europe to buy a house after Finland, according to data published by the brokerage firm Dresdner Kleinwort Benson. A typical urban home now costs more than 18 times average annual disposable income, compared with just 8.3 times in the US.

Tuesday

The Taoiseach and the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, announced a series of intensive talks in a final attempt to break the deadlock in the Northern talks before the June 30th deadline.

Austrian police began an investigation into the deaths of four tourists, three Irish and one English, who were white-water rafting on the Salzach river near Salzburg on Monday. Mr Alan Daly (35), Beechwood, Ballivor, Co Meath, Mr John Thomas Geough (28), who has a London address, and Ms Emma Duke (28), Claremont Pines, Carrickmines, Dublin, died when their raft, containing nine people, broke its moorings, swept over a fast-flowing weir, dropped into a whirlpool and capsized.

Michelle de Bruin acknowledged for the first time that her career had come to an end, but she continued to proclaim her innocence in a statement issued through her solicitors.

Wednesday

Names of a number of British soldiers involved in Bloody Sunday in 1972, when 14 people were killed, might have been accidentally divulged to representatives of the victims' families. The Saville inquiry into the shootings admitted that last autumn 73 sets of documents presented to the original Widgery Inquiry had been released to interested parties' solicitors which included statements by five ex-Paratroopers who were involved in the events but did not open fire. The statements contained the soldiers' names, ranks, and army serial numbers.

A husband-and-wife team who set up a recruitment consultancy business 10 years ago will be worth a combined £13 million when their CPL Group is floated on the Dublin and London stock exchanges later this month. Ms Anne Heraty and Mr Paul Carroll will each own about one-third of the shares in CPL, which is expected to be valued at £20 million when trading begins.

The Republic of Ireland soccer team beat Macedonia 1-0 at Lansdowne Road, with Niall Quinn scoring the winner.

Thursday

A former nun was found guilty of raping a 10-year-old girl at St Michael's Child Care centre, run by the Sisters of Mercy in Cappoquin, Co Waterford on a date unknown in 1987-88. Nora Wall (51), formerly Sister Dominic, and then director of the centre, was convicted of the crime with Paul "Pablo" McCabe (50) and both were remanded on continuing bail for sentencing. After leaving the order Wall subsequently worked in a hostel for women and children in Dublin and a Romanian orphanage. The deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, Mr John Taylor, threatened to resign twice in the past fortnight in a dispute over his refusal to endorse the party's candidate, Mr Jim Nicholson, in the European Parliament election. The turnout was predicted at 50 per cent at the close of polling in the North.

The Government is to sell its entire 50.1 per cent shareholding in Telecom Eireann when the company floats on the stock market next month. It had originally indicated that it would sell around 35 per cent of the group. A record price of £8.3 million was paid for a house on just over three acres at Brighton Road in Foxrock, Co Dublin.