Fianna Fáil is back down to just one candidate in Limerick County after Cllr Eddie Ryan withdrew from the ticket - just twelve hours after he was added.

If you were Paschal Donohoe, you would need news like this like a hole in the head.

Another Australian politician said he may have to quit Parliament because of dual citizenship, days after a High Court ruling was thought to have ended the crisis.

Jacinda Ardern has been sworn in as New Zealand's prime minister - and says she will lead a government that is active, focused, empathetic and strong.

Jacinda Ardern will be New Zealand's next prime minister and hopes to take the country on a more liberal path after nine years of rule by conservatives.

The High Court has dismissed an application by National Party co-founder James Reynolds to continue an injunction preventing the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association ( ICSA) from removing him from senior positions he had held with the organisation.

A European report on Islamophobia has referred to “worrying developments” in the treatment and perception of Muslims in Ireland.

The president of a new far-wing party has alleged that immigrants should leave the country, as they contributed to the collapse in the economy.

DISENCHANTMENT with traditional politics is being expressed right around the world in sometimes bizarre but always energising ways.

Australia will get its fifth prime minister in eight years after the ruling Liberal Party voted out Tony Abbott in favour of long-time rival Malcolm Turnbull, following months of infighting and crumbling voter support.

Nationalist supporters of Russian president Vladimir Putin brought together controversial far-right politicians from across Europe yesterday to demonstrate international support for Russia and weaken EU commitment to sanctions imposed on Russia over its role in Ukraine.

Prime Minister John Key has won an emphatic victory in New Zealand’s general election to return for a third term in office.

Uruguay's Senate voted to legalise first-trimester abortions for all women in a measure that came with so many strings attached it left neither side in the bitter debate completely satisfied.

Experts have warned a similar disaster to the Honduras prison fire could happen again in Central America.

The leader of New Zealand's Labour party conceded defeat to Prime Minister John Key's National Party in elections today, paving the way for him to return for a second term as the nation's leader.

New Zealanders are voting in national elections today, with popular prime minister John Key seeking to propel his centre-right party to the country's first outright parliamentary majority in years.

FORGET the prime minister. Real political power in Australia right now is being wielded by a maverick in a cowboy hat and his two colleagues. A week after national elections ended on a knife edge, the unlikely trio of lawmakers have emerged as kingmakers.

I WAS tempted to check the date of your edition that carried the report from Senator Liam Twomey (‘Lenihan slammed as speaker for Collins commemoration, August 12’) objecting to a “Fianna Fáil minister like Brian Lenihan” giving the oration at the Michael Collins commemoration in Béal na mBláth next Sunday.

Former New Zealand government ministers used their official credit cards to buy pornographic movies, Bollinger champagne, flowers for a romantic partner and even an airline ticket, official records showed today.

Honduras’ interim leader said he won’t meet face-to-face with ousted President Manuel Zelaya, but said Mr Zelaya could leave the foreign embassy where he is holed up if a country grants him political asylum.

YOU can tell right-wing religious groups are scraping the bottom of the barrel when they have to resort to praising themselves in letters to the Irish Examiner.

New Zealand Prime Minister-elect John Key said Monday he had won enough support to form a new government by mid-November, after meetings with two small parties.

New Zealand today elected its first conservative government in almost a decade, ending the rule of one of the world’s longest-serving elected women.

BRITISH Prime Minister Gordon Brown suffered an humiliating defeat in a mid-term election for a vacant parliamentary seat, exactly a year after he took power.

South Africa today said goodbye to former president PW Botha, a man who in life was associated with some of the worst excesses of apartheid, but whose death has shown the strides a bitterly divided country has made toward reconciliation.

PW Botha, the apartheid-era president who led South Africa through its worst racial violence and deepest international isolation, died peacefully in his sleep. He was 90.

SOUTH Africa’s last hardline white president, PW Botha, has died. He was 90.

Prime Minister Helen Clark’s Labour Party beat the opposition National Party by a single seat in New Zealand’s cliff-hanger election today, but neither party won a clear majority in Parliament.

New Zealand’s relationship with the US could enter a new era of co-operation if the country’s opposition National Party wins parliamentary elections tomorrow.

BRITISH National Party leader Nick Griffin yesterday pleaded not guilty to four race hate charges arising out of an undercover documentary.

The party linked to decades of white racist rule in South Africa formally departed the political stage today, with its leader apologising for ”a system grounded in injustice.”

SINN FÉIN leaders knew the IRA was planning the country's biggest-ever bank robbery while they were negotiating a peace deal with the Irish and British governments, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said yesterday.

Unknown gunmen opened fire on a public bus in northern Honduras late yesterday, killing at least 23 passengers and wounding 16 others, apparently many women and children, police said.

Beyers Naude, an Afrikaner cleric who spent half his life using the Bible to justify apartheid before becoming one of the anti-apartheid movement’s most important moral voices, died early today.

Former president FW De Klerk, who negotiated the end of the oppressive white-minority regime his party created, has warned that South African democracy is being undercut by the same racial divides as a decade ago.

South Africa’s third all-race election will be held on April 14, President Thabo Mbeki announced in Parliament today.

THE Jamaican prime minister has called for creating a republican form of government and dropping Queen Elizabeth as the country’s head of state.

The opposition National Party conceded defeat today in New Zealand’s general election and its leader said he expected Labour leader Helen Clark to form the next government.

NEW ZEALAND premier Helen Clark appears poised to win another term in office in today's general election. The Labour leader says being prime minister is "the best job I've had" and opinion polls point to her keeping the post.

The wife of former South Africa president F W De Klerk has been murdered.