The latest convoy of vehicles left Trim on May 3rd with 16 vehicles and 31 drivers taking turns to drive through France, the Netherlands, Poland and on to Lviv in western Ukraine
A Co Meath-based group has just returned from Ukraine where they delivered their 107th vehicle to the war-torn country for humanitarian use.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine the group has delivered four-wheel drive vehicles, ambulances, buses and vans, most of them filled with medical supplies.
The vehicles are used by the army mainly in ferrying injured soldiers and civilians to hospital from either the front line or from Russian drone attacks.
The latest convoy of vehicles left Trim on May 3rd with 16 vehicles and 31 drivers taking turns to drive through France, the Netherlands, Poland and on to Lviv in western Ukraine.
Volunteer driver David Duignan of Dunderry, who has been on a number of such trips said the experience was emotional, having visited a cemetery in Lviv where more than 1,000 new graves of Ukrainian soldiers, added since the war broke out, are accompanied by images of the young men who died.
Chris Moore from Belfast is no ordinary journalist.
He has worked for decades on the Kincora child abuse scandal. After extensive new research he makes credible allegations about the British royal family’s Lord Mountbatten (killed by an August 1979 IRA bomb in the western Irish county of Sligo) and a wide-ranging British state cover-up.
Kincora: Britain’s Shame – Mountbatten, MI5, the Belfast Boys’ Home Sex Abuse Scandal and the British Cover-Up
Readers are recommended to go and see the film “Lost Boys” whenever they get the chance – despite the British State’s efforts to kill the story, aided and abetted by the Irish police force, An Gárda Síochána (Guardians of the Peace).
All of this is grim reading.
The UK government has locked up files on Kincora until 2065 & 2085.Veteran investigative journalist Chris Moore’s new book, ‘Kincora: Britain’s Shame’, launched last night in a packed Duke of York bar, means we don’t have to wait until then. #mustread
The internet is plagued with false and dubious stories. A great resource for fact-checking is Snopes. Many readers, including this one, thought the claim headlined here could not possibly be true – the facts suggest the opposite.
Yes, RFK Jr. took grandkids swimming in sewage-contaminated creek on Mother’s Day 2025
The U.S. Secretary of Health posted one photo of himself surrounded by his family as he fully immersed himself in the contaminated creek’s water.
Photo shows RFK Junior’s granddaughter splashing him with the creek’s water using her bare leg as his grandson remained perched on a rock that emerged from the water, though the colour of his trousers indicated he had waded in the water moments before
We are delighted to publish a third tribute to Cathleen O’Neill on this blog – this time written by Shalim Malekmian for the Dublin Inquirer, May 14 2025. Thanks to Therese Caherty, who drew it to our attention
“A force bigger than life itself,” said a eulogy by O’Neill’s friend Carmel Jennings. “Working-class warrior,” said Rita Fagan, another friend of O’Neill’s.
A large pram is parked beside the door at 58 Amiens Street.
In a room on the left of the entrance, a baby boy wobbles on the ground, about to crawl.
Downstairs, toddlers play and chat with workers at the crèche in Saol Project, an education and support hub primarily for women grappling with drug addiction – but also those experiencing poverty and homelessness.
In the kitchen, patties sizzle in a pan. Most of the kids who come to Saol are children of its service users.
That’s what Cathleen O’Neill, its co-founder, wanted, said Paula Kearney, a training programme team leader at Saol, recently, sitting in the building’s backyard near a barbeque grill.
O’Neill wanted Saol to look after their kids so that women had time and space to recover and thrive, she said.
Two decades ago, O’Neill would bustle up and down the stairs at the old building, shows Born Bolshy, a 2002 documentary about her life by the late director Louis Lentin, saved in RTÉ’s archives.
“If you can! Alright, Mary. Thanks a million, bye, bye, bye, bye,” says O’Neill, before hanging up the phone at a tiny office in Saol.
Days after his election as head of Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV calls Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Pope Leo XIV has called Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss Ukrainian children abducted by Russia and a western-backed 30-day ceasefire, in a shift from the previous pontiff who had struck a more neutral stance on Moscow’s war. Ukraine’s president said on Monday that his first conversation with the new pope, who was elected last week, was “very warm and truly substantive” and thanked him for his support.
“We deeply value his words about the need to achieve a just and lasting peace for our country and the release of prisoners,” he said. The Vatican confirmed the two men had spoken on the phone but declined to provide any further details. “I carry in my heart the sufferings of the beloved Ukrainian people,” Pope Leo said on Sunday, and called for “an authentic, just and lasting peace as soon as possible”. “May all the prisoners be freed and may the children return to their families,” he added. His explicit support for Ukraine in its years-long war against Russia’s invasion was met with appreciation from Ukrainians and especially the country’s Catholics.
(image credit: Francesco Sforza/Vatican Media Handout Via Reuters)
This story originally appeared in a German daily paper published in Berlin, die tageszeitung, on May 10 2025.
Deep-fried fish with chips, vinegar and salt is a favourite dish in Ireland. But it was the Italians who spread the dish there.
Almost all the tables are taken on this Saturday evening in Romano Morelli’s restaurant. The Italian restaurant on Dublin’s Capel Street is narrow but long. Hardly anything reminds you that Morelli’s family sold fish and chips here for over 40 years, when the store was still a chipper.
That’s the name of the snack bars that serve the Irish favourite, fish and chips. A dish that most people would probably not associate with Italy, although Italian immigration to Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries had a significant influence on it.
Morelli’s grandfather was one of the last fish and chip vendors to come to Ireland with the first wave of immigration from Italy. He bought the store in 1948, which at the time was a snack bar with slot machines in the basement, says Romano Morelli. To this day, the chippers look almost identical: They are usually a bare room divided into two halves by display cabinets and deep fryers.
On one side, customers wait for the greasy goods, while the other side frantically prepares them. Italian is often spoken in these stores. Above their entrance doors hang the owners’ nameplates: Macari, Borza, Coffola, Fusco, De Vito, Cassoni, Caprani.
Almost all of these families or their ancestors come from Casalattico, a municipality in the central Italian province of Frosinone. More than 2,400 people whose families originally come from this village live in Ireland. Even today, the 800 or so inhabitants of Casalattico celebrate these ties every year and hold a festival on St. Patrick’s Day, the Irish national holiday, on March 17, with music, dancing, Irish flags and fish and chips (and, of course, vinegar and salt).
The connection between the community and Ireland is said to have started with Giuseppe Cervi in 1885, who accidentally left the ship he was on to the USA in Ireland. He hired himself out as a labourer in Dublin until he had earned enough money to buy a coal stove and a handcart with which he sold fish and chips outside the pubs. The business idea came from the north of England, where the meal was sold outside the factory gates.
Breen Reynolds, a former geography lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, doubts that this part of the story really happened in an interview on Irish television. However, it is confirmed that Cervi soon had enough money to rent a store. He ran it with his wife Palma, who is said to be the origin of the expression “one and one”, which is still used in Dublin today to order food. She always pointed to the menu and asked: “Uno di questo, uno di quello?”, meaning “one of this and one of that”.
The customer just had to nod.
Word of the Cervis’ success soon spread at home and many followed them to Ireland. By 1909, there were 20 fish and chip stores in Dublin run by Italians. However, the wave of immigration ended before the First World War.
The child abuse connection with Pope Leo XIV is probably the same as all top leaders of the Catholic Church. He wasn’t interested when the news started to break, he moved the rapists to a new parish or new job, while remaining indifferent to the victims.
Pope Francis’ small reforms like allowing communion to LGBT or divorced and remarried people seem likely to be accepted as a modernisation.
(image credit: Francesco Sforza/Vatican Media Handout Via Reuters)
Let’s wait and see.
Here is an extract from an Irish Times report “The cardinal, who is a member of the Order of St Augustine, resembles Francis in his commitment to the poor and migrants. Often described as reserved and discreet, Prevost will depart stylistically from Francis. His supporters say he will most likely continue the consultative process started by Francis to invite laypeople to meet with bishops.
It is unclear whether he will be as open to LGBTQ+ Catholics as Francis was. Although he has not said much recently, in a 2012 address to bishops, he lamented that Western news media and popular culture fostered “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel”. He cited the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”
Rev Michele Falcone (46), a priest in the Order of St. Augustine previously led by Prevost, described his mentor and friend as the “dignified middle of the road” to the New York Times earlier this week.
“He does not have excesses,” Fr Falcone said of Prevost. “Blessing babies, yes. Taking them in his arms, no.”
“I know that Bob believes that everybody has a right and a duty to express themselves in the church,” said Rev Mark R Francis, a former classmate of Prevost who runs the American arm of the Clerics of St Viator, a religious order.
While praised in Peru for supporting Venezuelan immigrants and visiting far-flung communities, the cardinal has drawn criticism over his dealings with priests accused of sexual abuse.
One woman in Chiclayo, who said she and two other women were sexually abused by two priests as girls long before Prevost was bishop, accused him of mishandling an investigation and of not stopping one of the priests from celebrating Mass.
We are delighted to publish a second tribute to Cathleen O’Neill on this blog – this time written by Lorna Siggins for the Sunday Independent, May 11 2025.
All who attended the funeral will remember the hilarious stories and moving tributes. Cathleen, in lock-step with her campaigning friend and activist Joan Byrne, was fearless.
Cathleen O’Neill, who has died aged 76, was a witty, irreverent and tireless activist, author and advocate for social change whose passion for education and opportunity transformed countless lives.
Described as an “organic intellectual” by Professor Kathleen Lynch of UCD, she said she was one of a rare few experts whose ideas were informed by their own working-class background. She was born and reared in Ballyfermot, Dublin, as the eldest of 13 children, but said in an Irish Times interview in September 2012 that her life “began at 33”.
Deepest condolences to all Cathleen’s family, friends, feminists, socialists, community activists and neighbours. She was a true warrior for all sorts of progressive causes. a very inclusive person, good singer, and unafraid to speak very plainly and politely when it was necessary. She was great company. There are great memories. She helped make Kilbarrack Dublin and Ireland a better place, especially for women. John Meehan
I first met Cathleen in the mid 1980’s via her great friends Joe Kelly and Therese Caherty.
Here are a few memories
23 People launched The Alliance for a No Vote (ANV), October 6 2001 in Dublin. Ivana Bacik, a Trinity College Dublin (TCD) Law Professor, introduced the discussion. ANV spokespersons included Sinéad Ní Chúalacháin, Catherine Naji and Cathleen O’Neill.
Founding organisations :
Irish Family Planning Association; Irish Council for Civil Liberties Women’s Sub-Committee; Lawyers for Choice; Cork Women’s Right to Choose Group; Dublin Abortion Rights Group; Women’s Education Research & Resource Centre, UCD; Pro Choice Campaign; Socialist Party; Workers’ Solidarity Movement.
Bertie Ahern’s government tried to sneak in an anti-choice amendment to the Irish constitution overturning a 1992 Supreme Court decision which made abortion in Ireland legal in certain circumstances – the X Case Judgement. The pro-choice side won.
It seems a Fine Gael Minister in 2012 was a movie fan who liked the Godfather gangster series. Michael Lowry TD lost a defamation action against the journalist Sam Smyth, prompting this exchange between the writer and the politician :
A Fine Gael minister once explained to me how he categorised Michael Lowry losing a defamation action against me in the High Court back in 2012: “It’s not personal, it’s just business.”
Sam Smyth
The fictional inspiration :
I said to myself, this is the business we’ve chosen; I didn’t ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!
Hyman Roth, like his old friend Vito Corleone, never lets things get personal. At least, he tries not to and puts up a facade that he does. Of course, that’s not true, he goes after Michael for both personal and financial reasons, but not before pretending it’s never personal.
Lee Strasberg as the gangster Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II
I am not so philosophical: It was very personal to me.
Had I lost, the disgraced former minister would have ended my career as a journalist and put me out of house and home.
Lowry contended that I had defamed him on the Tonight with Vincent Browne show on TV3 on June 24, 2010.
Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, the High Court judge who considered Lowry’s allegations against me, repeated in his February 10, 2012 judgment what I said that so enraged Lowry that he sought to go after me personally in the courts.
This is the transcript of the show as taken from the Kearns judgment:
Sam Smyth: “But the first that we caught sort (sic) on video with hand in till was Michael Lowry and he resigned as you might remember as Minister for Communications which all this has led on from.”
Vincent Browne: “Now let’s be clear now, let’s be careful about the hand in till. There is no suggestion at all anyway that Michael Lowry used his position as Minister to extract public funds that weren’t, that he wasn’t entitled to.”
Sam Smyth: “No but was in receipt, in allowed? The biggest business in the country to pay for the refurbishment of his home. I mean…”
Vincent Browne: “There was a tax that was a tax fraud.”
Sam Smyth: “And that well, there was not only a tax fraud, I really don’t think most people think it’s a good idea for Ministers to have their bills picked up by businessmen.”
Lowry contended in his legal filings that these words meant he was “a thief, a corrupt politician, unfit to be a TD or Government Minister and was or is a dishonest or untrustworthy politician”.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 