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Convicted killer Michael Stone stormed the Irish Parliament with enough homemade bombs to kill dozens in a rain of fire and nails. But it was all in the name of art, he says. The lifelong terrorist, now awaiting judgment in Ireland for his November 2006 raid on the Stormont Parliamentary Building in Belfast, is trying a novel defense against the attempted murder charges he's facing: His bombs were part of an innocent performance art installation and nothing more. The 53-year-old Stone was caught red-handed with a hoard of 18 deadly weapons he says were props in his one-man show. The...

Psychiatrists devise 'depravity rating' to help courts decide on death sentences By Charles Laurence in New York(Filed: 20/02/2005)A "depravity rating" that measures evil and will help courts decide whether convicted murderers should face execution or just imprisonment has been drawn up by American psychiatrists.For decades, doctors shunned the use of the word "evil" on the grounds that it crossed the line between clinical and moral judgment. Now, however, two studies of the criminal personality have concluded that "evil" should be used to describe the most vicious criminals – and that it can be measured. In the first study, Dr...

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - Belfast's most infamous militant stormed into the Northern Ireland Assembly headquarters Friday with a bagful of pipe bombs, forcing an evacuation that overshadowed the politicians' failure to meet a deadline for forming a new Catholic-Protestant administration. Two security guards trapped Michael Stone — an icon of Protestant extremism because of his grenade-and-gun attack on an Irish Republican Army funeral in 1988 — halfway inside the brass revolving door of Stormont Parliamentary Building. Stone, a long-feared figure who boasts of his desire to kill Sinn Fein leaders, repeatedly screamed "No surrender!" as one guard twisted Stone's arm...