Harrington upbeat for Irish Open

Padraig Harrington won the Irish Open at Adare Manor in 2007 Padraig Harrington is optimistic that recent work with golf guru Bob Rotella will help him return to form at this week's Irish Open.

Former world number three Harrington has now slipped to 64th in the rankings after missing the cut at the Open.

But the Irishman believes a recent session with Rotella could cure putting woes which have dogged him this season.

"We talked about it again, did some work and I believe that we hit the nail on the head," said Harrington.

"I have been struggling with my putting for the last few weeks and just couldn't put my finger on the problem.

"We worked on it before the tournament (Open Championship) started and I thought we had figured it out, but it still wasn't working.

"Ultimately it came down to the fact that I hadn't fully committed to my preparation and so I was still trying to figure out what I was doing over the ball.

"I wasn't trusting my reads and so when I stood over the ball I was still trying to figure out where I was going to hit it.

"It was very disappointing to miss the cut, but I feel that the work I got done over the weekend will pay big dividends in the coming weeks," added the 2007 Irish Open winner.

Darren Clarke pinpointed Rotella's input as crucial to his recent Open Championship triumph at Sandwich.

With the prize fund for the Irish Open being halved to ?1.32m following the loss of previous main sponsor 3, Clarke, Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell are the only members of the world's top 50 in action at Killarney this week.

Clarke and McIlroy have been named honorary life members of the European Tour after their major triumphs this summer.

The pair were presented with their lifetime badges in Killarney on Wednesday morning by Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny.

Ross Fisher pipped Harrington to win last year at Killarney and the Englishman, who has slipped to 63rd in the world rankings, is back to defend his title.

The field also includes Simon Dyson, David Horsey, Gregory Bourdy and 2008 winner Richard Finch.

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Irish debt rating cut by Moody's

12 July 2011 Last updated at 20:57 GMT Moody's said it was increasingly likely that Ireland would need further rounds of official financing Ratings agency Moody's has cut the Republic of Ireland's debt rating to junk status.

Moody's said its decision was based on the "growing possibility" that Ireland would need a second bail-out before it can return to capital markets.

The current European Union and International Monetary Fund support programme is due to end in late 2013.

It comes at a time when markets fear the debt crisis in the eurozone could spread to Italy and Spain.

Ireland, Greece and Portugal have all been downgraded by ratings agencies several times in recent months.

Last week, the European Commission raised the issue of the "appropriateness of behaviour" of agencies, and Greek Foreign Minister Stavros Lambrinidis said the agencies had exacerbated an already difficult situation.

In its latest downgrade, Moody's cut Ireland's ratings by one notch to Ba1 from Baa3.

And the agency warned that further downgrades were possible if the Irish government failed to meet its deficit reduction targets, or if Greece were to default, thereby causing further market disruption.

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Report reveals more Irish Church abuse

13 July 2011 Last updated at 15:58 GMT The Cloyne report was critical of Bishop John Magee A report published on Wednesday has criticised a Catholic diocese in County Cork for a failure to report all complaints of abuse to police.

The Commission of Investigation into the Diocese of Cloyne investigated how allegations against 19 priests were dealt with between 1996 and 2009.

The report said Bishop of Cloyne John Magee could not avoid "responsibility by blaming subordinates".

The Catholic Church has apologised following the report.

The leader of Ireland's Catholics, Cardinal Sean Brady, said it was another "dark day in the history of the response of church leaders to the cry of children abused by church personnel".

"The findings of this report confirm that grave errors of judgement were made and serious failures of leadership occurred," he said

"This is deplorable and totally unacceptable."

Bishop Magee was one of the priests identified by the commission.

The Cloyne report, which runs to 400 pages, said there were concerns about Bishop Magee's interaction with a 17-year-old boy.

"The commission regrets that it has not been possible to report the case involving concerns about Bishop Magee without identifying him," the report said.

"Concerns were expressed about his interaction with a 17-year-old boy."

It said the teenager, who had been contemplating joining the priesthood, was concerned that "the behaviour of the bishop towards him, which had not perturbed him at the time, was, on reflection, disquieting".

However, the report said it was satisfied that this case had been dealt with appropriately.

The Newry-born Bishop Magee stepped aside in 2009 after an earlier report criticised his handling of abuse allegations.

The Cloyne report, which was published by Justice Minister Alan Shatter and Children's Minister Frances Fitzgerald, said the response of the diocese to allegations of child sexual abuse for the period of 1996 to 2008 was "inadequate and inappropriate".

It said it was a "remarkable fact" that Bishop Magee had taken "little or no active interest" in the management of clerical sexual abuse cases until 2008. This was 12 years after the rules on how to deal with such matters were implemented by the church.

It added that Bishop Magee had to "a certain extent, detached himself from the day to day management of child sexual abuse cases".

"Bishop Magee was head of the diocese and cannot avoid his responsibility by blaming subordinates whom he wholly failed to supervise," the report said.

Complaints

The commission said it was aware of some 40 people who may have been affected by clerical abuse in the diocese.

All but two complaints came from people who were adults at the time the complaint was made.

The report said between 1995 and 2005 there were 15 complaints against clergy in the diocese which should have been reported.

The most serious lapse was the failure to report the two cases in which the alleged victims were minors at the time the complaint was made.

It also said there was no communication with a neighbouring diocese when a priest who had retired because of complaints went to live there.

However, there was no case in which the diocese moved priests against whom allegations had been made.

A number of priests whom allegations were made against were "retired".

The inquiry was set up by the Irish government in January 2009 following a report published the previous month.

It was conducted by the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) - a body set up by the Catholic Church to oversee child protection policies.

It found child protection practices in the diocese were "inadequate and in some respects dangerous".

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Irish rhino horn racket uncovered

7 July 2011 Last updated at 15:59 GMT Some black rhinos are being bred in zoos to protect the species Europol says it has uncovered an Irish organised crime group illegally trading rhino horn worth tens of thousands of euros as far afield as China.

The EU's police agency said it had gathered intelligence and evidence against the group, which was "known to use intimidation and violence".

The agency said it was working with Irish police and had drawn up an action plan to tackle the illegal trade.

More than 200 of the endangered animals were killed in South Africa last year.

There is a high demand for rhino horn, which is a prized ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine and is also used for decoration and to produce luxury goods.

Depending on the size and quality, a horn can be worth between 25,000 (?22,000; $36,000) and 200,000 euros, according to Europol.

'Significant players'

"Significant players within this area of crime have been identified as an Irish and ethnically Irish organised criminal group," the agency said on Thursday.

To obtain the horns, the group targeted antique dealers, auction houses, art galleries, museums, private collections and zoos, "resorting to theft and aggravated burglary where necessary".

International auction houses had been "exploited" in the UK, France, USA and China, Europol said.

The same group was also involved in other serious crime across the EU such as drug-trafficking, organised robbery, distribution of counterfeit products and money-laundering.

Its activities had also been monitored in North and Latin America, South Africa, China and Australia.

Europol and Irish police recommended launching dedicated investigations in each country involved and alerting potential targets "of possible visits to defraud or attack them for their specimens".

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Polar bears have Irish ancestors

7 July 2011 Last updated at 16:00 GMT By Steven McKenzie BBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporter Bones found in Ireland include those of juvenile brown bears The maternal ancestors of modern polar bears were from Ireland, according to a DNA study of ancient brown bear bones.

Scientists in the UK, Ireland and the US analysed the teeth and skeletons of 17 brown bears that were found at eight cave sites across Ireland.

The new research has been reported in the latest edition of Current Biology.

Previously, it was believed that today's polar bears were most closely related to brown bears living on islands off the coast of Alaska.

However, analysis of mitochondrial DNA - which is passed from mother to child - has shown the extinct Irish brown bears are the ancestors of all today's polar bears, the scientists said.

Their work provides evidence of the two species mating opportunistically during the past 100,000 years or more.

Continue reading the main story

It's amazing to think that Irish brown bears are the ancestors of the modern maternal polar bear lineage”

End Quote Dr Ceiridwen Edwards Oxford University Hybridisation has been recorded recently in the wild where grizzly bears have encroached on polar bear territories.

The bears split from a common ancestor to become separate species between two million to 400,000 years ago.

However, just before or during the last Ice Age the two species came together and polar bears mated with female Irish brown bears, the scientists said.

The maternal lineage can still be traced to all polar bears today, they added.

Prof Daniel Bradley, of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and Dr Ceiridwen Edwards, formerly of TCD and now at Oxford University, collaborated with Prof Beth Shapiro, of Pennsylvania State University, in the study.

Previously, Dr Edwards attempted to carry out DNA analysis of a sample taken from bones of a polar bear washed into caves in north west Scotland 18,000 years ago.

However, DNA had not survived in the remains from the Bone Caves at Inchnadamph in Sutherland.

'Environmental stresses'

Brown bear bones have been found across Ireland, with some of the best preserved examples recovered by cavers at Poll na mBear - Cave of the Bears - in County Leitrim, in May 1997.

Eoghan Lynch and Barry Keenan made the first finds, followed by later discoveries by other speleologists.

Continue reading the main story Caves in County Leitrim were named Poll na mBear following the discoveries made by cavers in 1997 According to the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) there were 200 polar bears registered in zoos worldwide in 2008Figures from the same year estimated that there might be 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears in the wildAn adult bear's skull with the teeth still in place and the bones of young bears were among the finds made.

These have since been dated and are the last recorded bears in Ireland.

The scientists who carried out the DNA analysis said the caves' constant and cool temperatures protected genetic material within the bones.

Dr Edwards, the research paper's lead author, sequenced the mitochondrial DNA from different time depths and from bones recovered from the eight sites.

She found that the older bears in Ireland - from between 43,000 and 38,000 years ago and before the last Ice Age arrived - had the same genetic signature as brown bears living today in eastern Europe.

But DNA from bears that roamed Ireland in cooler times, 38,000 to 10,000 years ago, have sequences that are the closest match yet to modern polar bears.

Bone isotope analysis revealed that despite the maternal genetic link, the Irish ice bears did not share the polar bears' marine diet.

All today's polar bears' maternal ancestors were from Ireland

Prof Bradley said ancient samples offered a means of going back in time and measuring the movement of species in response to past climate change.

Dr Edwards added: "It's amazing to think that Irish brown bears are the ancestors of the modern maternal polar bear lineage.

"As the hybridisation between the two species occurred at a time when their home ranges overlapped, most likely during environmental stress, this has implications for polar bears in today's climate."

Prof Shapiro said the results of their research pointed to the bears hybridizing opportunistically throughout the past 100,000 years and probably longer.

She said: "While brown bears and polar bears are hybridizing today, our results suggest that a recent hybridisation led to the capture of a mitochondrial DNA sequence that was present in the population of brown bears that were living in Ireland before the peak of the last ice age.

"That mitochondrial sequence replaced the previous sequence across the entire polar bear population."

Previously it was thought modern polar bears were most closely related to brown bears living on the islands of Admiralty, Baranof and Chichagof in Alaska's Alexander archipelago.

Scottish site

What are believed to be the only polar bear remains to have been found in Britain were in caves in Inchnadamph in Sutherland.

The bear's skull was found in 1927 and is held in the collections of the National Museum of Scotland.

An almost complete skeleton of another bear was recovered after years of work from the same Scottish site and later confirmed as that of a male brown bear.

The first pieces were discovered in 1995 by cavers exploring a network of caves.

But it was only in 2008 that Edinburgh-based caving club, Grampian Speleological Group, reached some of the final fragments.

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Irish oddity

28 June 2011 Last updated at 02:50 GMT An attempt to recover a Spitfire from a peat bog in Donegal will highlight the peculiar story of the men - both British and German - who spent much of World War II in relative comfort in neighbouring camps in Dublin, writes historian Dan Snow.

In Northern Ireland in 1941, a routine Sunday afternoon sortie by a pilot flying one of Britain's Spitfire fighters runs into difficulties.

Returning to base after flying "top-cover" for maritime convoys off the coast of Donegal, the Rolls Royce Merlin engine overheats and fails.

The pilot yells into his radio "I'm going over the side", slides back the bubble canopy, releases his seat straps and launches himself into the air.

Continue reading the main story 140 Germans, mainly Luftwaffe and U-boat crew100 Allied servicemen from Poland, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and sole American Bud WolfeThere were also 400 IRA internees in the campThe Spitfire is one of the most vaunted examples of British engineering's history. The greatest ever single-seat, piston-engined fighter, it had played a vital role during the Battle of Britain the year before.

Its design was so advanced that it served on the front line from the first to the last day of the war. Bailing out was no easy task.

The air flow hit this particular pilot like a freight train and tore off his boots. Luckily he was able to deploy his parachute and landed in a peat bog. His aircraft smashed into the bog half a mile away.

It sounds like a typical wartime accident but it was anything but. It was the beginning of one of the strangest incidents of WWII.

Bud Wolfe was very keen to get back into action

The pilot was 23-year-old Roland "Bud" Wolfe, an RAF officer from 133 "Eagle" Squadron, a unit entirely composed of Americans.

Bud himself was from Nebraska, one of a number of Americans who had volunteered to take up Britain's cause. Since the US was not yet at war with Germany when the men volunteered, the American government stripped Wolfe and others of their citizenship. These pilots were a mix of idealists and thrill seekers.

When Wolfe was found by the authorities he realised his, already unusual, situation was much more complicated than he had guessed. He had crashed over the border.

Since the South was neutral it had been decided that all servicemen of any belligerent nation that ended up on Irish soil through navigational error, shipwreck or other accident would be interned for the duration of the war.

Continue reading the main story British single-seat fighter plane used by RAF and many Allied countries during WWIIIts thin, elliptical wing allowed a higher top speed than similar fightersSpeed was seen as essential to defend against enemy bombersContinued to be used into the 1950s as a front line fighter and in secondary rolesWolfe found himself heading not back to his airbase, RAF Eglinton, now Derry International Airport, in Northern Ireland just 13 miles away, but to Curragh Camp, County Kildare, 175 miles to the south.

Here, a huddle of corrugated iron huts housed 40 other RAF pilots and crewmen who had accidentally come down in neutral territory. They were effectively prisoners of war.

It was an odd existence. The guards had blank rounds in their rifles, visitors were permitted (one officer shipped his wife over), and the internees were allowed to come and go. Fishing excursions, fox hunting, golf and trips to the pub in the town of Naas helped pass the time.

But what was really odd was the proximity of the Germans.

It was not just the British and their allies who got lost above and around Ireland. German sailors from destroyed U-boats and Luftwaffe aircrew also found themselves interned. The juxtaposition of the two sides made for surreal drama.

Continue reading the main story Dublin stayed neutral in 1939 - it was only 18 years since it secured partial independence after centuries of British rule Taoiseach Eamon de Valera even paid his respects to German representative in Dublin when news of Hitler's death emergedBut Irish people were not all so impartial - a 2009 Edinburgh University study found more than 3,600 soldiers from the South died on active serviceAnd in the British army alone, 100,000 Irish people served in WWII - half from the SouthSport was a notable feature. In one football match the Germans beat the British 8-3. There were also boxing contests.

It appears that the rivalry on the pitch followed the teams into the pub afterwards as well. They would drink at different bars, and the British once complained vigorously when the Luftwaffe internees turned up to a dance they had organised.

Anything further from front-line service is hard to imagine.

It may seem to us like a welcome chance to sit out the war with honour intact, plenty of distractions and no danger, but for Wolfe it was an unacceptable interruption to his flying activities.

On 13 December 1941 he walked straight out of camp and after a meal in a hotel, which he did not pay for, he headed into nearby Dublin and caught the train the next day to Belfast. Within hours he was back at RAF Eglinton where he had taken off two weeks earlier in his defective Spitfire.

He could not have expected what was to happen next. The British government decided that, in this dark hour, it would be unwise to upset a neutral nation.

The decision was made to send Wolfe back to The Curragh and internment. Back in the camp, Wolfe made the best of it, joining the fox-hunting with relish.

He did try to escape again but this time he was caught. Finally in 1943, with the US in the war, and the tide slowly turning, The Curragh was closed and the internees returned. Wolfe joined the US Army Air Force and served once again on the front line.

So great was his love of flying that he also served in Korea and even Vietnam. He eventually died in 1994.

But Wolfe's epic story did not end with his death. Thanks to the highly unusual, soft nature of the terrain in the peat bog where his Spitfire crashed, a team of archaeologists is attempting to dig up his aircraft.

This week I will accompany them with a BBC television crew and record what we hope will be substantial pieces of wreckage emerging from the bog. The bog defeated the attempt in 1941 to gather up the wreckage, so there should be plenty of Spitfire down there, but it may well defeat us.

The Eagle Squadrons allowed Americans to fight before the US entered the war

The digger has to sit on bog mats, big railway sleepers, to spread its 20-ton weight. But even they may not be enough to stop it sinking in. There is also a danger that the hole will simply fill with water or the sides cave in.

It is one of the most difficult excavations that an experienced team have ever faced. Whatever happens, I will be updating Twitter minute-by-minute as the excavation takes place.

Hopefully we will find the physical evidence that will shine a light on the events of that November night 70 years ago and also provide us with a connection to one of the most bizarre moments of the war.

Dan Snow is following today's attempt to recover Bud Wolfe's Spitfire in Co Donegal and will be posting updates via the Twitter account @DigWW2.

Bud Wolfe and the story of Curragh Camp is part of Dig WWII a series for BBC Northern Ireland to be presented by Dan Snow and due to be shown next year.

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McIlroy set to play in Irish Open

McIlroy to take break before the Open

The Irish Open has received a much-needed boost after US Open champion Rory McIlroy confirmed he will be playing in the event in August.

The tournament in Killarney is without a sponsor and the presence of McIlroy is sure to increase spectator numbers.

"Definitely, I will be playing the Irish Open later this summer," said the 22-year-old after securing his first major title at Congressional on Sunday.

However, McIlroy has pulled out of next week's French Open.

Fellow Northern Irishman Graeme McDowell did the same after he won the title last year, preferring to let the biggest week of his life sink in rather than rush back into competition.

Whereas McDowell returned at the Scottish Open, though, McIlroy is now set to make the Open at Sandwich on 14-17 July his next start.

The Irish Open suffered a blow when previous backers, telecommunications company 3 pulled out of the sponsorship last November.

McIlroy, McDowell and Padraig Harrington played in the tournament last year when crowds of up to 40,000 watched the action on the Killeen course.

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