US presidents vary between authoritarian figures and nappy changers, writes Olivia Kelleher

The American president is more moderate on foreign policy, and more sceptical of intervention, than the hawkish woman who may succeed him this year, says TP O’Mahony

ERIK LARSON is an American journalist and narrative historian, known for fast-paced books rich in authentic detail.

What difference do individuals make to history? This question is explored in Margaret McMillan’s new book, History’s People. 

Ryle Dwyer says Bitter Freedom is, a thoughtful and balanced history that exposes the need to be wary about what actually happened around 1916 before we engage in an unquestioning orgy of centenary celebrations. 

Final preparations are under way to confer the Freedom of Cork on President Michael D Higgins this week.

I’VE ONLY just discovered how Mother’s Day came about.

Abolition is about a politics fearful of other ideas. Abolition would stymie the challenge to the dominance every Irish government has had over a directly elected Dáil and an indirectly-elected Seanad

ANYONE who has ever known anyone with an Irish wolfhound declares an Irish connection for St Patrick’s Day.

While listening to Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore repeating the need to placate and keep sweet investors, businesspeople, etc above all else as he debates the Fiscal Treaty, I recall Woodrow Wilson’s words; “The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests.

HURLING legend Seán Óg Ó hAilpín is to be made a freeman of his home city.

BARACK Obama has been invited to become the third US president to be conferred with the Freedom of the City of Cork.

PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s visit in May will evoke memories of other celebrated visits of American presidents.

Barack Obama will make a flying visit to Norway today to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize, just nine days after announcing a troop surge in Afghanistan.

THE decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama so extraordinarily early in his presidency — less than nine months after he took office — was as unexpected as it is unprecedented.

President Barack Obama today won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

A 112-year-old American has become the world’s oldest living man after the death of 113-year-old Briton Henry Allingham on Saturday.

WHEN President Barack Obama met the press on Tuesday morning to discuss his budget proposals, he was sporting a green tie to mark St Patrick’s Day. “Green tie, not bad, huh?” he began.

Fire ripped through the ancestral homestead of a former US president in the North today.

Ordinary Americans joined President George Bush and other dignitaries in Washington to pay final respects to Gerald Ford as the former US president’s flag-draped coffin rested under the Capitol dome, before a last round of funeral services and burial near his family home in Michigan.

PRESIDENT Mary McAleese described her CV as now complete after being conferred with the Freedom of Cork yesterday.

FROM engaging in sexual relations with an intern to letting the Vietnam War escalate, US presidents have been blamed for some egregious errors.

“WHY has Jesus Christ so far not succeeded in inducing the world to follow His teachings?” US President Woodrow Wilson of the United States asked in 1919.

THE definition of Freedom. According to city officials, the freedom of the city does not now entitle Roy or Sonia to graze their animals in the Lee Fields — or rather, they can, but Environmental Officers might have something to say about it.

Victor Simpson, The Vatican

RAPPER P Diddy is trying to drum up support for John Kerry with a “Vote or Die” clothing line.

LAST year people were taking it for granted that George W Bush would be re-elected this November, but the lessons of history would suggest that it may not be so easy. Indeed public opinion polls indicate that he has an uphill battle.

The Freedom of Cork city is to be conferred on John Hume later today.

AS FORMER US President Bill Clinton rushes to finish his memoirs, he faces the more pressing task of writing a book deemed worthy of all the attention, an accomplishment no president has pulled off since Ulysses S Grant.

US President George Bush today declared that the British and American peoples were united in an “alliance of values”.

By Ryle Dwyer