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NEW HOLLAND, Ohio -- Joshua Rea, 30, heard the news while having a bite at CC's White Cottage restaurant. "This is crazy, man," he said incredulously, reaching for a phone to call his dad. "Obama's ancestors lived right down the road," he told his father, a local farmer. "Our ancestors were probably kicking it with his ancestors." Here in rural Pickaway County, 30 minutes south of Columbus, word is spreading that a pair of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's ancestors are buried just a few miles away and that the Democratic nominee has loads of distant relatives living in southern Ohio....

Immigration activists seeking to resolve the issue of the undocumented Irish in the US claimed today they had not received any assistance from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on this or other related issues. Speaking on RTÉ radio this afternoon, Ciaran Staunton, deputy chair of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform (ILIR), said that in comparison to the Republican Senator John McCain, the organisation had been rebuffed by the Obama campaign. Addressing the Irish-American Presidential Forum in Pennsylvania earlier this week, Mr McCain vowed to introduce comprehensive immigration reform that he said would give the estimated 50,000 undocumented Irish "a...

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Mail Online Holiday flight is diverted after mid-air brawl breaks out By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 4:07 PM on 15th August 2008 A holiday flight between to Crete had to be diverted after a brawl erupted among drunken passengers, it has been revealed. An eye-witness told how one man began smashing overhead luggage bins before the captain decided to land the plane in Venice. Aoife O'Reilly, 18, a student from Dublin, said the men involved were all over 30 years of age and had obviously been drinking.

My brother recommended a simple solution for Barack Obama’s Muslim “image problem”. It can all be fixed with a simple apostrophe. http://obamaformessiah.com

The Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, has told the Dail that the Government is doing all it can to secure legal status for Irish immigrants living and working illegally in the United States. Responding to questions from Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, Mr Cowen said the Irish Government was pursuing a special bilateral arrangement with the US that might help to address the problem. However, he said achieving a special amnesty for illegal Irish immigrants would be difficult given that there are millions of immigrants from other countries also living in the US.

The British and Irish culture of street violence Who's really more violent?By Christopher CookIf I had a dollar for every time a Brit has told me that our "gun culture" makes us "uncivilized"...... This tragic story caught my eye this morning...Teen Actor in Upcoming 'Potter' Film Stabbed to Death in Bar Brawl: LONDON — A teenage actor who is to appear in the new 'Harry Potter' film was stabbed to death Saturday during an early morning barfight. Robert Knox, 18, was murdered outside the Metro bar in southeast London as he tried to protect his brother Jamie, 17, from a...

Dig uncovers African beads buried in ancient village By Sean O’RiordanMay 22, 2008 BEADS that originated in Africa are some of the treasures archaelologists have found as they begin to explore an ancient settlement in north Cork. Test trenches also revealed pottery and weapons from a medieval period. In addition, there was evidence of prehistoric settlements in the area and an early ecclesiastic settlement, possibly from the 7th-8th century. Evidence of a large moat and cobbled walkways were also uncovered. Experts are due to conduct major excavations within weeks. One archaeologist said: “It’s one of the most exciting discoveries in...

Irish Viking trade centre unearthed Almost 6,000 artefacts and a Viking chieftain's grave have been discovered One of the Vikings' most important trading centres has been discovered in Ireland. The settlement at Woodstown in County Waterford is estimated to be about 1,200 years old. It was discovered during archaeological excavations for a road by-pass for Waterford city, which was founded by the Vikings. The Irish government said the settlement was one of the most important early Viking age trading centres discovered in the country. Its working group, which includes archaeologists from Ireland's museum and monuments service, said it was of...

I was dealing with my Mother, who is Canadian Irish Mystic, with maybe a Scots Injection along the line, about her Will of which I am executor, according to her, though I have never seen the Will and she will not show it to me until the "Time is Right". Now I the product of a mixed marrage English Protastant (Yankee)/Irish Catholic, with a few Scots Presbeterians along the way. It seems that the Left Hand Does Not Let The Right Hand Know What Is Going On. I asked her one time why she married my Father, she said he...

Pure hell of the siege of Musa Qala A little-reported battle against the Taliban in which seven of our (Poster's note: "our" means British, the Royal Irish Brigade troops) troops died has been revealed as one of the fiercest and most heroic of the Afghan campaign. Lieutenant-Colonel DJ Reynolds Musa Qala, a besieged outpost deep in Taliban territory, holds a special place in the battle records of the Pathfinder platoon of 16 Air Assault Brigade – and of the Irishmen, Danes and other soldiers who braved face-to-face fighting to relieve them. When a column at last got through to Musa...

Say the words "illegal alien," and most New Yorkers think of a cleaning woman from Mexico or a cab driver from Mali. Generally, they don't think of a nanny from Mayo or a bartender from Monaghan. But illegal immigration from Ireland continues – though much diminished from the 1970s and '80s, when thousands arrived, re-populating onetime Irish neighborhoods in Queens and the Bronx. After years of living illegally, many of those immigrants got their green cards, courtesy of the Donnelly visas (1987) and the Morrison visas (1990), which together provided some 62,000 Irish-born people with papers. Those numbers still left...

Irish and Dutch vessels found in Scottish graves Evidence that some of our prehistoric ancestors travelled considerable distances has come from two graves in Upper Largie, near Kilmartin in Argyll and Bute. One grave contained three distinctive beakers which Alison Sheridan, of the National Museums Scotland, describes as belonging to an early, international style, best paralleled by finds from the lower Rhine region of the modern-day Netherlands. Radiocarbon dates of 2500-2280 BC from hazel charcoal from within the grave confirms an early Bronze Age date. Though no bone was found because of the acidic nature of the local soils, the...

Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province.

One man has captured the heart of the new America It is hard to see who can stop Senator Barack Obama becoming the next President of the United States. He has built up an excitement such as no candidate has created since President Kennedy in 1960. He is, in my view, a better speaker than Kennedy. Like Kennedy, he combines personal magnetism with a strong appeal to American idealism. Like Kennedy, he is young and speaks for the new generation of American politics. By ordinary political reckoning, 2008 ought to be the Democrats' year. In 2006 they captured both houses...

I was looking for any good sources regarding the indentured servitude, and enslavement, of Irish and other non-African peoples in America. My state - New Jersey - is seeking to become the first Union state to apologize for slavery, and I'm wondering if it will cover slaves from all ethnic groups, if it's to be enacted at all. Any info would be helpful.

The great and good of Ireland gathered for a conference this week to discuss how to deal with mass immigration - a relatively new phenomenon in a country more used to seeing its own people leave. The World Tonight's Paul Moss has been in the Republic of Ireland looking at the impact of immigration. Siobhan O'Donahue was in a hurry. Immigration is changing Irish schools (pic: Educate Together) Trying to nail her down for an interview, you get the impression this is a permanent state of affairs - rushing from one meeting to another, dealing with a succession of...

Growing up Irish in Queens and on Long Island, Daniel Cassidy was nicknamed Glom. “I used to ask my mother, ‘Why Glom?’ and she’d say, ‘Because you’re always grabbing, always taking things,’” he said, imitating his mother’s accent and limited patience, shaped by a lifetime in Irish neighborhoods in New York City. It was not exactly an etymological explanation, and Mr. Cassidy’s curiosity about the working-class Irish vernacular he grew up with kept growing. Some years back, leafing through a pocket Gaelic dictionary, he began looking for phonetic equivalents of the terms, which English dictionaries described as having “unknown origin.”...

The publisher of a local Irish newspaper is calling on the organizers of the city's annual St. Patrick's Day parade to begin overhauling the event's image by inviting Northern Ireland's Protestant leader to be a leader of next year's procession.Irish Voice publisher Niall O'Dowd said in interviews Tuesday and in an editorial to be published Wednesday that the parade could "symbolize a new era for hope" if it were led next March by Ian Paisley and his Catholic partner in the territory's new power-sharing government, the Sinn Fein deputy leader Martin McGuinness.The parade typically draws about 2 million spectators.Paisley, head...

BAGHDAD — “Training the Iraqi Army is now the main focus for the British Forces in Iraq,” the Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards said recently, so since their deployment to Iraq in May, training the Iraqis is exactly what the Guards have been doing. Since May, the 1st Battalion Irish Guards have been responsible for delivering training known as ‘Mentoring, Monitoring and Training’ to the Iraqi Army at both Shaibah, south west of Basra, and in Baghdad. The work has seen the Irish Guards forge relationships with the Iraqi Army and train them in order that they...

Heard the one about the Irish Catholic forced to quit for telling jokes ... about Irish Catholics!By LIZ HULL - More by this author » Last updated at 21:41pm on 12th September 2007As an Ulster-born Catholic, Denis Lusby is perhaps more qualified than most to poke fun at the Irish. But although most enjoy reading the jokes he prints in his parish magazine, some can't see the funny side. And after a council official complained they were racist, Mr Lusby, the magazine's editor, resigned. scroll down for more...  Denis Lusby says he is the victim of political correctness after...

John Hurt admits sadness at his faked Irish ancestry By Tom Peterkin, Ireland Correspondent Last Updated: 2:56am BST 12/09/2007 For years the actor John Hurt took great pride in his Irish aristocratic ancestry, believing that his great-grandmother was the illegitimate child of the Marquis of Sligo. Actor John Hurt admitted that his lack of Irish blood was a great disappointment Much to his disappointment, genealogists have discovered that his Irishness was nothing more than a family myth, perhaps created to give the family tree a spurious link to the upper class. Instead it appears that his family hails from Croydon,...

Irish railroad grave mystery solved Scientists in Pennsylvania believe they have found a mass grave containing the bodies of 57 Irish immigrants who died 175 years ago. The men from Donegal, Tyrone and Londonderry had made the journey across the Atlantic in the summer of 1832 to work on the railroads, but their time in the US was tragically short. Mystery still surrounds the question of how they met their deaths just six weeks after getting off the boat - a cholera epidemic was blamed, but foul play has never been ruled out. At the time, a cholera epidemic was...

How Bronze Age man enjoyed his pint Declan Moore and Billy Quinn have an ancient beer theory Bronze Age Irishmen were as fond of their beer as their 21st century counterparts, it has been claimed. Two archaeologists have put forward a theory that one of the most common ancient monuments seen around Ireland may have been used for brewing ale. Fulacht fiadh - horseshoe shaped grass covered mounds - are conventionally thought of as ancient cooking spots. But the archaeologists from Galway believe they could have been the country's earliest breweries. To prove their theory that an extensive brewing tradition...

President Bush is committed to dealing with the issue of illegal Irish immigrants in America, the US consul for Northern Ireland has said. The failure of recent legislation which would have allowed illegal immigrants who had left the US to return means many are afraid to visit home. US consul Dean Pittman said the president wanted to resolve the issue. "People from Ireland have played a tremendous role in building our country," he said. "But at the same time we have to regulate in a way so that people aren't taken advantage of." "So people can come to the United...

Like all great troubadours, Tommy Makem isn't dead. His body is lifeless, having finally succumbed to the lung cancer that ate away at him the last two years. But Tommy Makem was an Irish soul singer, and souls don't die. His music is preserved, on the old vinyl LPs he made with his pals, the Clancy Brothers, more recently on CDs, more intimately in memory, in the hard drive of any brain that heard his basso profundo voice. Tommy Makem arrived at Logan Airport in 1955, with one of those makeshift, masking-tape-bound suitcases that Irish immigrants carried before the country...

UK Citizens Abandoning the UK in Greater Numbers July 25, 2007 - Press Dispensary - Increasing numbers of people are taking the decision to move overseas as a result of the UK’s current immigration policy, according to www.globalvisas.com, a specialist immigration consultancy that provides immigration advice and visa services. As numbers of immigrants to the UK from the new European Union Accession states continue to grow, more and more people in the UK are choosing to take their experience and skills overseas. The consultancy caters for immigrants to the UK as well as British people who wish to emigrate to...

THE IRISH IN AMERICA By John Francis Maguire, 1868 CHAPTER XXIV. The Know Nothing Movement--Jealousy of the Foreigner--Know Nothings indifferent to Religion--Democratic Orators--Even at the Altar and in the Pulpit--Almost Incredible--The Infernal Miscreant--A Strange Confession THE KNOW NOTHING movement of 1854 and 1855 troubled the peace of Catholics, and filled the hearts of foreign-born American citizens with sorrow and indignation. They were made the victims of rampant bigotry and furious political partisanship. There was nothing new in this Know Nothingism. It was as old as the time of the Revolution, being Native Americanism under another name. Its animating spirit...

A village in south-west Ireland has won a fresh round in a battle to change its name in the Irish language back to Fort of the Harlot. For centuries, the village known as Doon in English had been known in Irish as Dun Bleisce, or Fort of the Harlot, but the name was changed in 2003 when the Government ordered a simpler An Dun, or The Fort. The unpopular move led to 1,000 locals signing a petition to have 'harlot' added back to the name. They were backed by local politicians and a Limerick County Council motion of support.

Irish angler uses Magna Carta on landowner By Tom Peterkin, Ireland Correspondent Last Updated: 1:47am BST 14/04/2007 The Duke of Devonshire's ownership of Ireland's most prolific salmon river is to be challenged by an angler in a landmark court case that evokes the historic tensions between the English aristocracy and the Irish. Michael O'Shea will cite the 1215 Magna Carta signed by King John to argue that he has the right to fish the Blackwater as he attempts to overturn a poaching conviction. His case will question the Devonshires' entitlement to the river, which is on the border of Co...

US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama can now count himself as one of the millions of Americans with Irish heritage. Research by the genealogy website ancestry.co.uk reveals that Mr Obama's great great great grandfather was born in Ireland, although it is not yet known where. Falmouth Kearney sailed from Ireland to New York in 1850 at the age of 19 on the S.S. Marmion arriving on the 20th of March. AdvertisementHe initially settled in Ohio, got married, had eight children, and later moved to Indiana, right next door to the state Obama currently represents in the US Senate.

May the road rise to meet you, May the wind be always at your back, May the sun shine warm upon your face, May the rain fall soft upon your fields, And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Chris Edwards is director of tax policy studies and author of Downsizing the Federal Government. On St. Patrick's Day, we wear green and celebrate the culture of Ireland. I'll be down at the pub tomorrow, but I'll be toasting Ireland's success at attracting greenbacks -- all that investment flowing into the Emerald Isle and the resulting prosperity. Ireland has boomed in recent years, and it now boasts the fourth highest gross domestic product per capita in the world. In the mid-1980s, Ireland was a backwater with an average income level 30 percent below that of the European Union. Today, Irish...

More than 2,500 undocumented Irish immigrants and their supporters braved a snowstorm yesterday to rally in Washington in support of reforms that would allow them to stay in the US legally and eventually apply for citizenship. Dressed in green and white T-shirts with the slogan "Legalise The Irish", the mostly young demonstrators from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere spent the morning lobbying members of Congress in their Capitol Hill offices. At the rally, which was organised by the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform (ILIR), a succession of senators and congressmen, including Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Rodham...

Irish are shunning Guinness By Harry Wallop, Business Correspondent and Simon Caldwell Last Updated: 2:04am GMT 16/02/2007 It is as Irish as shamrock and the Blarney Stone, but a pint of Guinness is falling out of favour in its home country. The iconic drink, which has been brewed in Dublin for the last 250 years, is suffering a severe downturn in sales, the company admitted yesterday. Diageo, the UK drinks giant that owns Guinness, said volumes of the stout fell by 10 per cent in Ireland in the last six months as increasing numbers of drinkers die off. Paul Walsh,...

Irish river find may be first discovery of Viking ship by Andrew Bushe Fri Jan 26, 5:29 PM ETAFP/Scanpix/File Photo: A replica of a Viking ship sails off Oslo in 2006. An ancient boat discovered... " DUBLIN (AFP) - An ancient boat discovered in a riverbed north of Dublin may be the first Viking longship found in the country, Environment and Heritage Minister Dick Roche said. The wreck in the River Boyne, close to the northeastern port of Drogheda, was described by Roche as potentially an "enormously exciting discovery". The vessel, nine metres (30 feet) wide by 16 metres long,...

Luck of the Irish pays off big time Last Updated: 12:36am GMT 22/01/2007 The Big Issue seller standing outside a newsagent in a seaside celebrity hideaway was singularly unimpressed by Europe's most spectacular economic success story. His reaction to the news that the Irish were now officially among the world's richest people was unprintable. As a purveyor of the homeless magazine in affluent Dalkey, the Dublin suburb where Bono, Enya and the film-maker Neil Jordan live, he was only too aware that the Celtic Tiger has yet to bestow its largesse on him. Others have been much luckier, as the...

The EU recognises the Irish language's resurgence The Irish language (Gaeilge) is set to get official status in the EU on 1 January, bringing the total to 23. The European Commission says Bulgarian and Romanian are expected to get official status on the same day, when the two Balkan countries join the EU. According to Ireland's 2002 census, 1.57 million of the four million population can speak Irish. The commission says the EU will not have to translate all legislation into Irish, "mainly for practical reasons". The EU will have a team of 29 translators and editors to handle...

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - Belfast's most infamous militant stormed into the Northern Ireland Assembly headquarters Friday with a bagful of pipe bombs, forcing an evacuation that overshadowed the politicians' failure to meet a deadline for forming a new Catholic-Protestant administration. Two security guards trapped Michael Stone — an icon of Protestant extremism because of his grenade-and-gun attack on an Irish Republican Army funeral in 1988 — halfway inside the brass revolving door of Stormont Parliamentary Building. Stone, a long-feared figure who boasts of his desire to kill Sinn Fein leaders, repeatedly screamed "No surrender!" as one guard twisted Stone's arm...

Two Republican terror groups opposed to the Good Friday Agreement have denied they are involved in any plot to kill Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. The Irish National Liberation Army and the Continuity IRA said this weekend there are no plans to assassinate Sinn Fein leaders. They also condemned any threats to the two Sinn Fein MPs even though they were political enemies. The INLA and its political wing, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, described claims by Adams that he and Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly were under threat as 'nonsense'. An INLA spokesman told The Observer that the allegation...

DUBLIN -- In a stainless-steel cabinet between two gurneys, Josh Moonman stores bottles of a pink fluid, labeled with skulls and crossbones, that is used for embalming bodies. "If I were to open one of those lids now and let you smell it, it would knock you back," says Mr. Moonman, an embalmer for Ireland's Fanagan Group of mortuaries. Because the fluid contains formaldehyde, which is poisonous, European Union regulators are considering banning the chemical as a potential threat to human health and the environment. Among the worries, environmentalists say: decaying bodies leaching toxic chemicals into the ground. But a...

Omagh bombing trial gets started DNA evidence links man to 1998 massacre, court is told By Jonathan McCambridge 25 September 2006 The trial of the man accused of murdering 29 people in the 1998 Omagh bomb massacre finally got under way today. Belfast Crown Court was told that DNA and fibre evidence could connect 37-year-old Sean Hoey to the no-warning Real IRA explosion and a number of other dissident republican attacks. Hoey, from Molly Rd, Jonesborough, who denies a total of 58 terrorist offences, sat in the dock in Court 12, guarded by two court officials, as the Diplock trial...

Just a few short games ago, Notre Dame was on the receiving end of one woodshed beating after another when it went up against Top 20 opponents. Now, just 14 games into the career of head coach Charlie Weis – less than the length of a single NFL season – the Irish are the ones dragging their opponents past the hay barn and the henhouse and making no effort to muffle the screams of their helpless victims. After an inauspicious start last weekend – a 14-10 win at Georgia Tech – Notre Dame exploded in a 41-17 win at home...

Sinn Fein accuse McDowell of 'posing' as tough on crime Sinn Féin spokesperson Aengus O Snodaigh TD today accused Minister for Justice Michael McDowell of "headline grabbing" and posing by adopting a tough stance on crime. In his statement Mr O Snodaigh supported suggestions that overcrowding at Mountjoy contributed to the death of Gary Douch in July adding: "More prisons and bigger prisons is not the answer." The Dublin south-central TD said: “After the tragic death of Gary Douch in Mountjoy Prison at the end of July, the Irish Prison Service rejected suggestions that Mountjoy was overcrowded, or that overcrowding...

Harney quits as PDs leader Deputy Irish Prime Minister Mary Harney has announced she is to resign as leader of the Progressive Democrats, junior partner in the Republic's coalition government. The Irish health minister made the announcement in Dublin this afternoon. She said: "This afternoon at a meeting of the parliamentary party I informed my colleagues of my intention to stand down as leader of the party as soon as my successor has been chosen by the party." Ms Harney, 53, who has been party leader since 1993, said: "The leadership issue within the Progressive Democrats arose in June and...

Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Féin, is due to fly to the Middle East tomorrow to meet Hamas representatives and lend his support to the search for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. The MP for West Belfast was invited by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas, which emerged as the strongest party in the Palestinian elections in January, is banned in both the EU and the US, where it is deemed to be a terrorist organisation. There have long been contacts between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the republican movement in Northern Ireland. The Israeli government has made...

A European airline plans to let passengers use their cell phones during flights starting next year, but it could be awhile before U.S. carriers get the green light from federal officials. Ryanair, the Irish budget airline and Europe's biggest low-cost carrier, intends to outfit 50 aircraft, or about a quarter of its fleet, with OnAir mobile technology by the end of next year, allowing passengers to call, text message and e-mail during flight. Ryanair's remaining fleet will be equipped starting in 2008. The company said it expects to receive regulatory approval, which would make Ryanair the first European airline to...

Honour for Irish who fought for US from Bull Run to 9/11By David Sharrock, Ireland Correspondent   Bloomberg at the monument with an American bald eagle (PAUL MCERLANE)  THE Mayor of New York flew to Ireland yesterday to mark the Irish contribution to the birth of the United States and to unveil a monument to the “69th Fighting Irish” regiment. Michael Bloomberg was honouring the regiment, which fought with distinction for the Union during the American Civil War.     The ceremony took place in Ballymote, Co Sligo, where the regiment’s most famous commander, Michael Corcoran, was born. It...

What do Nelson Mandela, Michael Collins, Archbishop Makarios, Menachim Begin, Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Shamir, Eamon DeValera and Jomo Kenyatta have in common, apart from having being heads of state? As everybody knows, but few remember, they were all vilified as "terrorists" by the British or American authorities. Ronald Reagan branded Mandela's African National Congress a terrorist organization - and to be fair, it did commit some terrorist acts, while the ancestors of Likud blew up the King David Hotel, assassinated the highest British official in the Middle East during the war against the Nazis, and gunned down United Nations representative...

Unexploded bomb found at house being built by UUP peer Gardaí in Co Louth are investigating the discovery of an unexploded bomb at a construction site near the border yesterday afternoon. The device, which is understood to have contained around 70 pounds of an explosive mixture, was found in a downstairs room at a house being built near Hackballscross. Gardaí said it would have destroyed the house if it had exploded. It was made safe yesterday by bomb disposal experts, who later took it away for further examination. Reports this morning say the house where the bomb was found was...