Northern Ireland struggles to heal deep fracture

By Sam Cage BELFAST (Reuters) – When U.S. President Barack Obama visited Northern Ireland before the G8 summit in June, he hailed its extraordinary progress in the 15 years since a peace agreement to end three decades of what locals call “The Troubles”. On the other side of Belfast the next day, a petrol bomb thrown over a fence dividing Protestant from Catholic communities exploded next to a four-year-old girl playing in the street – just one example of sporadic violence still haunting the British province. The region of 1. …