With everything from karate for kids to computers for the silver surfer, this year’s Cork Lifelong Learning Festival is fun, fascinating and — best of all — free.

In the light of the newly-released State papers, Ryle Dwyer suggests there may be some deluded expectations of voter resistance to Sinn Féin.

Northern Ireland deputy first minister and ex-IRA commander Martin McGuinness has rebuked Norman Tebbit for saying he hopes he is shot in the back for attending a State banquet at the invitation of the Queen.

Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister and ex-IRA commander Martin McGuinness has rebuked Norman Tebbit for saying he hopes he is shot in the back for attending a State banquet at the invitation of the Queen.

British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s secret attempts to end the IRA hunger strikes are revealed in official documents made public for the first time today.

PROMINENT loyalists, a financial adviser to the embattled Icelandic government, a Greek economics expert and a Cork sporting legend will be among the speakers at a major summer school organised by Sinn Féin.

On the 30th anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands, the hunger striker is still regarded as a hero of republicanism, says Peter Geoghegan.

Former Sinn Féin publicity director Danny Morrison today demanded the courts reveal why a conviction linking him to an IRA kidnap plot was dramatically overturned.

A former Sinn Féin publicity director had a conviction, linked to the IRA kidnap of a suspected informer in 1990, overturned today.

Sinn Féin's former director of publicity Danny Morrison has demanded that the reasons why his conviction in 1991 for the false imprisonment of an IRA informer is being quashed should be given in open court.

HUNDREDS of former IRA prisoners are to attempt to have their convictions overturned and claim compensation.

Hundreds of former IRA prisoners are to attempt to have their convictions overturned and claim compensation, it was revealed today.

A man convicted of falsely imprisoning a police informer in the North will bid to clear his name at the Court of Appeal, it was announced today.

There was no delay in telling gardaí about new information about a suspect terrorist device planted in the Mansion House over 25 years ago, the Minister for Justice Michael McDowell insisted today.

AUGUST 15 (the Feast of the Assumption) is fondly remembered by Danny Morrison (Irish Examiner, August 18). The bonfires, the innocence, sense of identity and... memories.

HOW are things in Mississauga this fine day? And in Toronto by the lake? Do the natives make you welcome, my Irish friends?

A FORMER IRA jail chief attacked for claiming the organisation blocked a life-saving deal to end the 1981 hunger strike last night declared: “The truth’s on my side.”

SINN FÉIN and the IRA refused to allow photographs to be taken of the proposed arms decommissioning in December.

Danny Morrison

The IRA is sick of being blamed for everything which goes wrong in the peace process and recent developments reflect that, writes Danny Morrison

NORTHERN IRELAND politics has had a busy August. The word processors and wordsmiths of the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin have been particularly busy.

THE blinkered and cynical views expressed by Danny Morrison (Irish Examiner, August 11), if shared by the wider republican movement, do not bode well for the chances of a successful outcome to the review of the Good Friday agreement.

THE belligerent and bare-faced equivocation of Danny Morrison and other Sinn Féin spin doctors, since Section 31 became inoperable, has now become part of the political landscape.

Former National Union of Mineworkers president Arthur Scargill tonight insisted he regretted nothing about the 1984 strike and insisted that his union did not lose.

DANNY MORRISON’S piece entitled ‘Republicans no dunces in a land of slow learners’ (Irish Examiner, June 21) is an unworthy ex post facto justification for years of IRA murder and mayhem during which thousands died and tens of thousands of lives were ruined.

TWO phrases leap from Danny Morrison’s article (‘The future of Sinn Fein’, Irish Examiner, June 14).

Scotland Yard chief John Stevens could quiz the British army’s top spy inside the IRA about a spate of sectarian murders within days, it emerged today.

Ireland's top writers have come together to voice their opposition to the war through the power of the pen.

Colombia rebels have technology they could only have obtained from abroad, it was claimed last night as three suspected IRA members went on trial accused of training the Marxist guerillas in terrorist tactics.

THE IRA is linked to two detailed explosive manuals found in the possession of Marxist rebels in Colombia, a army major yesterday told the trial of three alleged IRA men accused of training the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The trial opened today of two IRA men and a senior Sinn Fein official who are accused of training Colombian Marxist rebels in terror tactics.