After years of savage cuts, the Irish now face a stark choice: do they hand over control of their economy to Europe – or go it alone without the safety net of future bailouts? In Cork, David McKittrick meets the people preparing to vote

A teenage girl has been shot dead and her sister seriously injured in a gun attack in a small village in Northern Ireland.

France's presidential election was a close-run affair, far closer than the polls had suggested through most of the long and often ill-tempered campaign. So, while François Hollande's victory gives France its first Socialist President for 16 years and makes Nicolas Sarkozy France's first one-term President for more than a generation, it represents something less than the historic turnaround Mr Hollande's supporters rushed to claim. France, like so many European countries, remains finely balanced between left and right. A crisis such as the one that it, and the Continent as a whole, faces, is not resolved by an election; in some ways, an election merely highlights the divisions.

Ireland's deputy prime minister Eamon Gilmore added to the pressure on the country's most senior cleric Cardinal Sean Brady today over his role in a secret child abuse inquiry.

Former Fianna Fail TD Ned O'Keeffe was released without charge after being questioned by gardai over suspected fraud offences.

A Dublin security tribunal today heard allegations that Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, was involved in sanctioning the murders of two senior police officers in 1989.

Police in Northern Ireland have arrested six people after a masked man at a republican commemoration threatened further violence by dissidents opposed to the peace process.

How did an instrument of Roman torture end up becoming a club badge for pious Christians? The cross was supposed to inspire terror, and those crucified made into a public spectacle of Roman imperial power. Crucifixion sent a message: we, the Romans, are in control. Defy us and die a horrible death.

Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern has resigned from his political party in the wake of a corruption inquiry, but insisted the findings of the probe had dealt him a grave injustice.

A man was shot dead in Belfast city centre, police said.

Lord Bannside, better known as the Rev Ian Paisley, is in intensive care in Belfast with heart problems. Aged 85, he has been prominent in Northern Ireland politics for more than half a century.

The Irish Government warned there is no hiding from difficult decisions that need to be taken in the interests of the State and citizens as €1.4 billion (£1.2 billion) spending cuts were outlined.

Unionists have stepped up their demands for the Mayor of Belfast to apologise or resign for refusing to present an award to an Army cadet.