WORLD IN BRIEF : BRITAIN : Convictions in IRA Case to Be Voided

The government said it will ask an appeals court to throw out the convictions of seven people who served prison sentences for allegedly running an Irish Republican Army bomb factory. The announcement came after Home Secretary David Waddington told the House of Commons that six members of the Maguire family and a close friend had “become innocently contaminated by traces of explosives” during police tests after their arrest. The action marked the collapse of all convictions stemming from two IRA bombings of pubs in Guildford and Woolwich in 1974, in which seven people died.