Word: belfasts
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Funny how peace slips away. Two months ago, Northern Ireland seemed on the brink of a final settlement. Then the Irish Republican Army was accused of carrying out a $50 million bank robbery in Belfast. Finally, last week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, said further progress would be impossible until the I.R.A. winds up its activities - and the group responded with an angry statement saying Blair and Ahern were "making a mess of the peace process. Do not underestimate the seriousness of the situation." There's no sign the I.R.A. is planning to return...
...again. But when the latest push for a final settlement between nationalists and unionists ran aground last week, it was due to a novel deal breaker: a $50 million bank heist. Ulster's Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, announced Friday that he believed the brazen Dec. 20 robbery from the Belfast headquarters of Northern Bank had been the work of the I.R.A. - a statement that immediately derailed a power-sharing deal that had seemed close to a positive conclusion just weeks earlier. The I.R.A. denied involvement, but even before Orde spoke, many in Northern Ireland believed the republicans - some of whom...
When Jonathan Simms was 17, doctors thought he had 14 months to live. The Belfast teen was exhibiting the first symptoms of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (VCJD), the human version of mad cow disease, and there could only be one prognosis. But three years later, his condition is no longer considered terminal. Thanks to a controversial new therapy, he may become the first known survivor of a disease that has killed 147 Britons since 1995. After the diagnosis, Simms' father Don read about the use of an anticoagulant called pentosan polysulphate (PPS) to delay the onset of scrapie, a disease...
Three years ago, one-time Harvard crew heavyweight Keir Pearson ’90 learned from a journalist friend how Rusesabagina risked his own life to save hundreds of others from near-certain slaughter. The story piqued the interest of Belfast-born filmmaker Terry George, a one-time Oscar nominee best known for the screenplay In the Name of the Father (1993). George searched for a Hollywood studio that would bring Rusesabagina’s story to the silver screen. But several top Hollywood execs refused to put their money behind the film. “They all thought...
...pictures must be taken of the destruction of weaponry that republicans have hoarded since their cease-fire was announced a decade ago. The I.R.A. refused, saying Paisley would use the pictures to "humiliate" them. The standoff was particularly frustrating for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has been to Belfast 33 times in seven years trying to secure a deal. Still, Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern got Paisley and Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political allies, to agree on previously hot issues like policing. Solving the stalemate may be tricky, but even Paisley, a die-hard unionist...