Looking for a weekend break with a difference? Try Istanbul, says Suzanne Harrington. It’s a treasure trove of palaces, mosques, museums and markets.

John and Sally McKenna have compiled their pick of Ireland’s 100 best places in their latest book. Here, they unveil their top Munster choices – and explain why they made the cut.

As a documentary on Eamon de Valera’s time in America airs, historian and author Ryle Dwyer looks at how history is taught here — and explains why he did not take the subject for his Leaving Cert.

Today is the Feast of the Assumption all over the Christian world, a feast day first instituted by Emperor Maurice in 600 AD and bigged up by Pope Nicholas 1 around 850 AD to rival Christmas and Easter.

Donal O’Keeffe visits the major Turkish city that straddles Europe and Asia across the Bosphorus Strait and is fascinated by its magical blend of museums, markets, history and restaurants.

Videos and photos of Jeff Olsen and his new bride Anna Lisa Van Bloem, who were wed during the Summer Solstice on the Hill of Tara in Co Meath, were stolen from Anna Lisa's brother's car while he stopped to visit the Hill of Slane on the way back to the airport.

In advance of his Cork gig, Tommy Tiernan tells Ellie O’Byrne about his comedy influences, his obscure taste in film, and his love of Chris De Burgh.

Plants that conjure up the otherworldly beings in their name are the ones to watch, says Fiann Ó Nualláin.

Fianna Fáil TD and Ireland South MEP election candidate Billy Kelleher has been accused of "selling out" traditional pro-life party support over his decision to back the removal of the eighth amendment.

Ireland South MEP candidates will battle it out for crucial European election votes tonight at an Irish Examiner town hall debate with just a week to go before the national ballot.

The principle of religious tolerance or liberty has only been acknowledged by the Catholic Church since 1965. It is not even an aspiration outside the West, says TP O’Mahony

Peter Jackson gets over the gain line, behind the headline

New Zealanders didn’t think they were a target, either. Our gun control is better.

I WAS a religious child, convinced the devil was watching my every move, eager to entice me into the greatest sin I could conceive of at that time — stealing penny sweets. (I never did, by the way. A jelly snake didn’t seem worth spending an eternity hanging out with Satan.)

Well Christmas is well and truly over for another year.

Why do we go along with the portrayal of Christmas as the equivalent of General Patton’s march to relieve the siege at Bastogne?, asks Terry Prone.

Sitting high on the cliffs of eastern Inishvickillane the view eastwards to the other Blaskets is simply extraordinary, writes Dan MacCarthy.

It is a pity that Pope Francis' radical message is drowned out by repeating ad nauseam the mantra, “clerical sex abuse”, suggests Victoria White

There is scarcely a country in this world that has suffered more oppressively and horrendously, and been morally corrupted so egregiously under the tyranny of the Papacy than Ireland.

In tendering her resignation this week as principal of St Patrick’s National School in Greystones, Co Wicklow, Eileen Jackson has stood up for Christianity in the face of tribalism.

An old Irish church has been named alongside the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney’s Opera House as some of the coolest constructions on the planet.

The world-famous Harlem Gospel Choir, which has perfomed alongside Bono and sang for popes and the UN General Assembly, is to perform at Cork Opera House.

Here's all you need to know this morning ...

What should concern Pope Francis much more is that so many Irish Catholics are turning away from Christianity, writes Victoria White

THE death of Billy Graham has robbed the United States of its most notable evangelist.

The My Lai massacre — the worst American atrocity of the Vietnam War — took place 50 years ago next month on March 16, 1968, although US citizens did not become aware of it until 20 months later when freelance journalist Seymour Hersh provided the first substantial account.

A society less comfortable with moral ambiguities, convenient fictions or, as they are often called, Irish solutions to Irish problems, might be more uneasy about the gap between what we pretend to be and what we are.

The Dublin suburb of Dalkey is immortalised in the surrealist work of one of Ireland’s greatest writers, Flann O’Brien.

The Wren’s Day tradition has survived in a particular way in Dingle, writes Majella O’Sullivan

From studies of history and geology, it is clear that what we now call Ireland experienced cycles of climate change. We have rocks that formed under tropical seas and others formed in hot deserts. We are not a million years away from what we call the Ice Age. Most of our present-day soils were formed from rock debris laid down during and after that period. Over the last 2,000 years, there have been warm periods and mini ice ages.

Sport has always played a vital role in Irish society. If there is injustice we should speak out about it as we do in all other walks of life, writes Ryle Dwyer. 

Fascists and other far-right extremists are set to assemble on Saturday in Warsaw for the march.

Ukip's new leader Henry Bolton has said the party has avoided becoming the "UK Nazi Party" with his election at the expense of a candidate who described Islam as "evil".

Donovan is looking forward to travelling the few miles from his Co Cork home to play the city’s 38th folk festival, writes Ed Power

Many believed nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi  had the qualities of which greatness are made. Perhaps, in hindsight, it is now clear Mammmy Suu only had the qualities of which power is made, argues Victoria White. 

Rev Billy has long protested against Trump and consumerism, while also providing comfort to spiritual refugees. He’s now bringing his choir to Ireland, writes Ellie O’Byrne.

The victim of a robbery attempt by a man he met via the fabguys.com gay dating website spoke up for his attacker and said he did not want to see him jailed.

As an uncompromising atheist, Roy Hattersley is an unlikely candidate to tell the story of the Catholic Church in Ireland and Britain, but he does so in masterly style, as Michael Duggan discovers 

While the media slavers over every bloody moment, rehashing and draining the last drop of gore from every single incident, ordinary people march on, writes Suzanne Harrington. 

THE announcement that the Sisters of Charity will not be involved in a new national maternity hospital must have been a bitter pill to swallow for the order, the Catholic hierarchy and the wider tradition of Irish Catholicism. 

EXOTIC names of places like Kabul, Kandahar and Khartoum were on the lips of many Irish people not only during the past 20 years but also in the 1870s and 1880s.

Children from rising numbers of non-religious families should have their upbringing better reflected in primary schools that use new teaching resources, says multi-denominational body Educate Together.

The guys who did the bad things seem to have been rewarded with a lot more money than the girls to whom the bad things were done, writes Terry Prone.