Belfast, U.K.
‘Mrs. Robinson’ scandal: A sex scandal involving the wife of a key Protestant politician in Northern Ireland threatens to derail the province’s power-sharing accord. Peter Robinson, head of the Democratic Unionist Party, temporarily stepped down as first minister this week amid reports that his wife, Iris, took money from developers in 2008 to help her then-19-year-old lover start a business. Iris Robinson, 60, is also a member of the British Parliament. She checked into a mental facility last week after the BBC reported the affair, and her husband said he was taking a six-week leave to care for her. It’s a bad time to be away: The province’s government is close to collapse because the unionists and Sinn Fein, the main Catholic party, can’t agree on policing and justice issues.
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What’s in a name? The British government has outlawed an Islamist group that was planning to march through Wootton Bassett, a town that receives recent British war dead. Wootton Bassett is next to the air base where the soldiers’ bodies arrive, and the town stages elaborate mourning ceremonies carried live on national television. The group, which wants to protest the ceremonies and the war in Afghanistan, was already banned under the Terrorism Act of 2000. But it has continued to operate under new names, including Islam4UK and Al-Muhajiroun, which have now also been banned. “We’re not going to stop,” said the group’s leader, radical imam Anjem Choudary. “If that means setting up another platform under another label, then so be it.”
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