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Berlin attack suspect released, deported husband returns and Mexico explosion

Winter scene at Booterstown Nature Reserve on Tuesday. Photograph: Cyril Byrne / The Irish Times
Winter scene at Booterstown Nature Reserve on Tuesday. Photograph: Cyril Byrne / The Irish Times

Berlin attack suspect released as Isis claims responsibilityOpens in new window ]

German police have admitted they are not sure who carried out the Monday evening attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12, after releasing their only suspect on Tuesday evening.

A day after a 40-tonne lorry ploughed into a western Berlin market just after 8pm, injuring 48 people, police released without charge a 23-year-old Pakistani man, identified only as Naved B.

“We need to work on the assumption that an armed perpetrator is still on the loose. As a result of this, we are on high alert,” said Holger Münch, head of Germany’s federal criminal police force.

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‘The nightmare is over’: Galway woman re-united with deported husbandOpens in new window ]

A Co Galway woman has been re-united with her husband after a six-month battle to have his deportation overturned.

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Kleber Medeiros arrived into Dublin airport on Tuesday night at the end of a two-day journey from Brazil, to his overjoyed wife, Harriet Bruce.

The Ballinasloe couple had been parted in July when Kleber was deported, following an allegation that their wedding had been a so-called marriage of convenience.

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Mexico fireworks market explosions kill at least 31, injure scoresOpens in new window ]

A series of massive explosions destroyed a fireworks market outside the Mexican capital on Tuesday evening, killing at least 31 people, injuring dozens and leaving the market a charred wasteland.

Television images showed a flurry of multicolored pyrotechnics exploding into the early afternoon sky as a giant plume of smoke rose above the market. Fireworks detonated in a peal of clattering bursts reminiscent of a war zone.

It was the third time in just over a decade that explosions have hit the popular San Pablito marketplace in Tultepec, about 32km north of Mexico City.

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Newgrange sun trap may be only 50 years old, says archaeologistOpens in new window ]

Trapping the winter solstice sun at Newgrange in Co Meath is not a 5,000-year-old phenomenon, but a 50-year-old “construct”, according to a former State archaeologist.

Our Stone Age ancestors were not as clever as we thought, and the significance of Newgrange as a "Hiberno-Roman" cult site in the late Iron Age has been deliberately underplayed, Michael Gibbons, co-author of a paper on the subject, argues.

Newgrange’s alignment, which captures the rising sun during the winter solstice period around December 21st, has made it one of the world’s best known megalithic tombs.

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Hawkins House demolition gets go-ahead from councilOpens in new window ]

Dublin City Council has granted permission for the demolition and redevelopment of Hawkins House, paving the way for a €50 million office scheme which includes Apollo House.

The council in recent days granted permission to receiver Mazars for the demolition of Apollo House, the 1960s office block on Dublin's Tara Street which has been occupied by housing activists and homeless people.

The permission now granted to the Office of Public Works will allow a combined development of a new office “quarter”, along with shops, restaurants, a public plaza and a diagonal pedestrian street. However, there will be no apartments in the development which is almost 50m tall.

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