We show that the group of type-preserving automorphisms of any irreducible semiregular thick right-angled building is abstractly simple. When the building is locally finite, this gives a large family of compactly generated abstractly simple locally compact groups. Specialising to appropriate cases, we obtain examples of such simple groups that are locally indecomposable, but have locally normal subgroups decomposing non-trivially as direct products, all of whose factors are locally normal.

Suppose $R$ is a commutative ring with identity of prime characteristic $p$ and $G$ is an arbitrary abelian $p$-group. In the present paper, a basic subgroup and a lower basic subgroup of the $p$-component $U_p\left(RG\right)$ and of the factor-group $U_p\left(RG\right)/G$ of the unit group $U\left(RG\right)$ in the modular group algebra $RG$ are established, in the case when $R$ is weakly perfect. Moreover, a lower basic subgroup and a basic subgroup of the normed $p$-component $S\left(RG\right)$ and of the quotient group $S\left(RG\right)/G_p$ are given when $R$ is perfect and $G$ is arbitrary whose $G/G_p$ is $p$-divisible....

Let $S\left(RG\right)$ be a normed Sylow $p$-subgroup in a group ring $RG$ of an abelian group $G$ with $p$-component $G_p$ and a $p$-basic subgroup $B$ over a commutative unitary ring $R$ with prime characteristic $p$. The first central result is that $1+I(RG;B_p)+I(R\left(p^i\right)G;G)$ is basic in $S\left(RG\right)$ and $B[1+I(RG;B_p)+I(R\left(p^i\right)G;G)]$ is $p$-basic in $V\left(RG\right)$, and $[1+I(RG;B_p)+I(R\left(p^i\right)G;G)]G_p/G_p$ is basic in $S\left(RG\right)/G_p$ and $[1+I(RG;B_p)+I(R\left(p^i\right)G;G)]G/G$ is $p$-basic in $V\left(RG\right)/G$, provided in both cases $G/G_p$ is $p$-divisible and $R$ is such that its maximal perfect subring $R^{p^i}$ has no nilpotents whenever $i$ is natural. The second major result is that $B(1+I(RG;B_p))$ is $p$-basic in $V\left(RG\right)$ and $(1+I(RG;B_p))G/G$ is $p$-basic in $V\left(RG\right)/G$,...