Image copyright An Garda Síochána Image caption A photo of the search operation was released by Gardaí (Irish police)

A suspected mortar tube and a "substantial quantity of ammunition" have been recovered by police close to the Irish border in County Louth.

Gardaí (Irish police) and the Irish army searched land near the village of Omeath on the Cooley peninsula.

In a statement, the Gardaí said the operation was "targeting the activities of dissident republican groups".

The searches began on Friday morning and ended on Saturday. No arrests have been made.

The operation was led by Garda Special Detective and Emergency Response Units.

Irish army explosives experts were also involved.

The suspected mortar tube will be examined by Garda ballistics experts.

Irish national broadcaster RTÉ reported that the haul is being described as "significant".</s>A suspected mortar tube and a "substantial quantity of ammunition" have been recovered by police close to the Irish border in County Louth.

Gardaí (Irish police) and the Irish army are taking part in the searches on lands near the village of Omeath on the Cooley peninsula.

In a statement, the Gardaí said the operation is "targeting the activities of dissident republican groups".

The searches began on Friday morning. No arrests have been made as yet.

The operation is being led by Garda Special Detective and Emergency Response Units.

Irish army explosives experts are also involved and a safety cordon is in place.

Searches are expected to continue into Saturday.

The suspected mortar tube will be examined by Garda ballistics experts.

Irish national broadcaster RTÉ reported that the haul is being described as "significant".</s>Around a thousand rounds of ammunition and a mortar tube were discovered in two hides about six kilometres from Omeath, Co Louth, today.

Around a thousand rounds of ammunition and a mortar tube were discovered in two hides about six kilometres from Omeath, Co Louth, today.

A thousand rounds of ammunition and mortar tube discovered buried in Louth

The assorted ammunition was for use in small arms and semi automatic rifles. They were concealed in lunch boxes stashed into a barrel, which had been buried in the ground.

The empty mortar tube was found wrapped in plastic in a separate hide nearby.

The finds were made in a wood, about a kilometre off the Omeath to Flagstaff road.

The discoveries followed a big search operation by gardai, with the aid of a digger, as a result of intelligence gathering by officers.

Local garda personnel from the Louth division were backed up by anti terrorist officers from the Special Branch and the Emergency Response Unit.</s>Weapons and ammunition have been found during a day-long search in County Louth.

Gardai, targeting dissident Republican groups, are still searching sites near Omeath on the Cooley peninsula.

So far, they have found a substantial amount of ammunition and a mortar tube.

The army bomb squad is at the scene, which is sealed off.

No arrests have been made, and Gardai say the operation continues to be live.</s>Gardai have recovered a "substantial amount of ammunition" along with a mortar tube during searches of the Cooley Peninsula in Co. Louth.

Detectives and members of the Emergency Response Unit are currently carrying out a live operation in the area as part of an investigation targeting the activities of dissident Republican groups.

A statement from gardai said: "As part of the investigation a search operation commenced this morning (1/02/2019) on lands near Omeath on the Cooley peninsula.

"During the searches to date Gardaí have recovered a substantial quantity of ammunition of varied calibre along with a mortar tube (pending examination by Garda ballistics experts).

"Army EOD are currently assisting at the site and a cordon is currently in place. The search is expected to continue into tomorrow.

"The operation is being led by members of the Garda Special Detective and Emergency Response Units. No arrests have been made at this time."

The New IRA are an off shoot and amalgamation of other dissident terror groups opposed to the Good Friday Agreement.

In a statement provided to local paper the Derry Journal, the group said it placed the car bomb which detonated in Bishop Street shortly after 8.10pm on January 19.

That attack was claimed by a group styling itself "The IRA".

The New IRA is led by a notorious bomber who has carried out atrocities over decades.

Sources have said that he has come to attention of security forces again and is planning a new campaign.</s>Update: Gardaí have seized "a substantial quantity of ammunition" and a mortar tube in an operation investigating dissident Republican groups in Co Louth.

Officers started the search this morning near Omeath on the Cooley peninsula.

Gardaí said they "have recovered a substantial quantity of ammunition of varied calibre along with a mortar tube".

Gardaí at the search operation in Omeath. Pic: Garda Press Office

The Army Bomb Disposal team are at the site and a cordon is in place, with the search expected to continue into tomorrow.

No arrests have been made.

Earlier: 'Significant' Garda operation believed to have unearthed weapons in Louth

Gardaí are believed to have found what could be weapons, possibly belonging to dissident republicans, in what is being described as a "significant" operation.

Gardaí have requested the Army Bomb Disposal team to attend the scene of the search in the Cooley Peninsula area of Co. Louth.

The operation is understood to be in the general area of Omeath

Gardaí say the operation is live and ongoing and involves the Special Detective Unit. Among other things, it is responsible for investigating threats to State security.

No other details are available at the moment.</s>Before a 19th-century Connecticut inventor named Washington Wentworth Sheffield came up with the idea of using a collapsible lead tube for long-term toothpaste storage, people used to keep the stuff in jars. But it’s kind of incredible that a toothpaste tube design from the 1890s has survived mostly unchanged to this day, despite its inefficient packaging. One Consumer Reports test on Crest and Colgate tubes found that up to 13% of the packaged toothpaste would be wasted, even when the user pushed, pulled, squeezed, and otherwise abused the tubes to get it all out.

Then, late last year, 22-year-old interior architecture design major Nicole Pannuzzo received an assignment in one of her Arizona State University classes. She would have to redesign the classic Colgate tube, along with the company’s logo. So, inspired by origami and a collapsible ketchup bottle, she came up with a tube that would do a less wasteful job of delivering paste onto the brush.

“I found this little tiny bottle–it looked like it was for a kids’ toy–and it was a collapsible ketchup bottle. It just goes up and down, accordion style,” Pannuzzo says. “From that I knew it could be done, somehow. So that’s why I kept going with the origami thing. It was mostly just experimenting.”

Pannuzzo’s collapsible design certainly looks cool, but she admits she hasn’t put it through any rigorous tests. Commenters on the Smithsonian blog, which originally discovered her invention, have also been quick to point out that the tube’s many creases could also serve as traps for toothpaste.

“[Commenters] will go off, and I’m like, ‘Calm down, man. It’s a student project, it’s just an experiment,'” she says.

But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be talking about toothpaste tube design. MIT researchers have also developed a type of super-slick coating to make any kind of sticky substance pour easily out of the bottle.

At least one Colgate employee has taken note. Pannuzzo says she received an email from someone at Colgate–though she’s unsure of the department–praising her design.</s>Toothpaste tubes count among the worst-designed packaging on the shelf today. Even those of you who are meticulous about squeezing from the bottom wind up wasting toothpaste simply because it’s too hard to extract the last few drops that gather near the top edges. With all that Aquafresh we’ve thrown out over the years, we could’ve fixed the dental hygiene of the entire nation of England.

Designers Sang Min Yu and Wong Sang Lee have come up with a simple solution: a zippable cap that eliminates that vexing deadzone of a typical tube. Made out of Tetra Pak — the same stuff used for milk cartons — and resembling something between a push pop and a Ziploc bag, SavePaste works by letting you slide open the tube, then extract toothpaste from a single corner. The packaging is collapsible, like a milk carton. So when your tube is nearly tapped, you just flatten it and blammo: the last dollops of toothpaste emerge.

An added benefit, the designers say: SavePaste reduces both material waste and shipping costs. That’s because it’s a third the size of your average toothpaste packaging, which, as we all know, comes as a tube inside of a box. With SavePaste, the tube is the box.</s>DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish police seized a substantial quantity of firearms and a suspected explosive device near the border with Northern Ireland on Friday as part of an investigation into the activities of militant Irish nationalist groups there.

The searches took place near the County Louth village of Omeath, which lies on a small peninsula separating part of the border between European Union-member Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland.

The currently seamless border will become the United Kingdom’s only land frontier with the EU when it leaves the bloc, scheduled for the end of March.

Police on both sides have warned that any hardening of the border as a result of Brexit, with the potential return of customs posts, could be a target for the small number of militant groups still active in Northern Ireland after a 1998 peace deal ended three decades of violence in the province.

“During the searches to date Gardaí (Irish police) have recovered a substantial quantity of ammunition of varied caliber along with a mortar tube (pending examination by Garda ballistics experts),” the police said in a statement.

The recovery of the ammunition was part of ongoing police investigations targeting militant groups based in the area. The army’s bomb disposal unit was assisting at the scene, the statement added.

A militant group calling itself the “IRA” said this week it was responsible for a car bomb which detonated outside a court house in the Northern Irish city of Londonderry in January, highlighting the threat still posed by groups opposed to the peace agreement.

No one was injured in the blast, which the group said was not linked to Brexit.</s>Searches are resuming in County Louth this morning as part of an operation targeting dissident Republican groups.

Yesterday a large quantity of ammunition and a mortar tube were discovered on land close to the village of Omeath.

Members of the Garda Special Detective and Emergency Response Units were involved in the operation.

At one point, the army bomb disposal team were called in to assist.

No one has been arrested in connection with the discovery at this time, however Gardaí say that investigations are ongoing.
Ammunition and a mortar tube was found at the Irish border in County Louth.