NATION IN BRIEF : FLORIDA : Documents Tie IRA Group to ’84 Bomb

An Irish national charged with trying to buy a Stinger missile in West Palm Beach, Fla., had told undercover police that his Irish Republican Army cell was involved in an attempt to kill British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984, prosecution papers filed in court say. The documents quote the defendant, Kevin Joseph McKinley, as implicating the IRA in the bombing at a Brighton, England, hotel in which five people died. Thatcher escaped injury in the blast. McKinley, 33, and three other men are accused of trying to buy the ground-to-air missile from undercover agents for $50,000.