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Four asylum seekers have left the site of accommodation that was provided for them in Co Clare, during an ongoing blockage of access routes by locals to the site. A group of 34 asylum seekers was accommodated at three holiday homes on the site of Magowna House Hotel in Inch on Monday evening. However, access roads to the the site were then blocked by local protesters using tractors with another gate being blocked by a silage bail. On Tuesday, some asylum seekers expressed fear over the ongoing situation. One of the drivers of the tractors, who did not want to...

Ship-sinking monster waves revealed by ESA satellites   Rare photo of a rogue wave     21 July 2004  Once dismissed as a nautical myth, freakish ocean waves that rise as tall as ten-storey apartment blocks have been accepted as a leading cause of large ship sinkings. Results from ESA's ERS satellites helped establish the widespread existence of these 'rogue' waves and are now being used to study their origins.  Severe weather has sunk more than 200 supertankers and container ships exceeding 200 metres in length during the last two decades. Rogue waves are believed to be the major...

PARIS (AFP) - European satellites have given confirmation to terrified mariners who describe seeing freak waves as tall as 10-storey buildings, the European Space Agency (ESA) said. "Rogue waves" have been the anecdotal cause behind scores of sinkings of vessels as large as container ships and supertankers over the past two decades. But evidence to support this has been sketchy, and many marine scientists have clung to statistical models that say monstrous deviations from the normal sea state only occur once every thousand years. Testing this promise, ESA tasked two of its Earth-scanning satellites, ERS-1 and ERS-2, to monitor the...

Rare photo of a rogue wave Ship-sinking monster waves revealed by ESA satellites 21 July 2004Once dismissed as a nautical myth, freakish ocean waves that rise as tall as ten-storey apartment blocks have been accepted as a leading cause of large ship sinkings. Results from ESA's ERS satellites helped establish the widespread existence of these 'rogue' waves and are now being used to study their origins.   Severe weather has sunk more than 200 supertankers and container ships exceeding 200 metres in length during the last two decades. Rogue waves are believed to be the major cause in many such...

A student has died after falling from cliffs in Ireland while reportedly taking a selfie. The man in his 20s fell from the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, in the west of the country. He was studying in Dublin and Irish media say he was an Indian national. Police are treating it as a "tragic accident" amid reports he slipped while taking the selfie on Friday afternoon. A police spokesman said: "The alarm was raised shortly after 3pm when a man was seen falling from the cliff edge." His body was later recovered by the coastguard based at Doolin...

Archeologists have uncovered evidence of pre-farming people living in the Burren more than 6,000 years ago -- one of the oldest habitations ever unearthed in Ireland. Radiocarbon dating of a shellfish midden on Fanore Beach in north Clare have revealed it to be at least 6,000 years old -- hundreds of years older than the nearby Poulnabrone dolmen. The midden -- a cooking area where nomad hunter-gatherers boiled or roasted shellfish -- contained Stone Age implements, including two axes and a number of smaller stone tools... The midden was discovered by local woman Elaine O'Malley in 2009 and a major...

According to the "Annals of the Four Masters" the island was once called Fitha Island and it formed part of the mainland until the day "the sea swelled so high that it burst its boundaries, overflowing a large tract of country, and drowning over 1,000 persons." This happened on March 16th, 804. Some reports describe it as an earthquake, others as a tidal wave when "the sea divided the island of Fitha into three parts." These three islands are Mutton Island, Inismattle (or Illanwattle) and Roanshee (or Carrig na Ron). There is a fourth island in the area called Carraig...

More than nine in ten residents have voted against plans to plant 115 migrants in the small town of Lisdoonvarna, local media reports. The Irish government says there can be “no delay” in beginning to transfer the first batch of asylum seekers it intends to accommodate in a hotel in the town of just 300 people.

March 25 is officially Tolkien Reading Day. Yes you heard us! In 2002 a New York journalist inquired with the Tolkien Society if there was such a thing and low and behold they set it up. So why March 25? Well it's Tolkien’s birthday Jan 3 and Bilbo & Frodo’s birthday on Sept 22nd but March 25 is the perfect day as it's the date of the downfall of Sauron! To honor the Tolkien Reading Day we thought it apt to look at the fact that his world of Middle Earth is based on the Burren, in County Clare.

Alan E Hayden, the director of more than 200 medieval excavations in Ireland, believes the grouping of islands off the Kerry coast suggests earthquake and tsunami wave style damage... The Times report adds: "A folk tale collected by a teacher in the early part of the last century offers an explanation for local place names connected to a road that ran from Dolus Head through the islands to Skellig. "The road, a pre-medieval structure, is called Bóthar na Scairte, or road of the cataclysm, and it is traceable for some distance on Valentia. In the folk tale the road and...

Call to tighten safety design as scientists admit to being baffled by deadly 100ft rogue waves They are the stuff of legend and maritime myth: giant waves, taller than tower-blocks, that rise out of calm seas and destroy everything in their paths. For years scientists and marine experts have dismissed such stories as superstition. Walls of water do not rise out of the blue, they said. But now research has revealed that 'killer waves' do exist and regularly devastate ships around the world. They defy all scientific understanding and no craft is capable of withstanding their impact. 'Rogue waves in...