Northern Ireland standoff puts peace and power-sharing at risk

PORTADOWN, Northern Ireland — Hard-liners in Northern Ireland are reviving an age-old dispute rife with bitter symbolism that pits the rights of British Protestants against those of Irish Catholics — and risks the destruction of their supposed unity government. Hundreds of residents of the Garvaghy Road, the main Catholic district in the otherwise staunchly Protestant town of Portadown, near Belfast, stood in the roadway in pouring rain overnight to block a Sunday morning parade by Northern Ireland’s main Protestant brotherhood, the Orange Order — a parade that had been banned since 1998 because of the widespread violence it triggered.