It must be the week that’s in it, but the judges were showing a lot of love to the surviving celebs tonight.

And then there were eight. Maia Dunphy was the latest contestant on Dancing with the Stars to exit stage left, with the Marty Party still going strong.

LATEST: It has been stated this evening that Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald was not informed of a phone call between Nóirín O’Sullivan and the Department of Justice over the adversarial legal strategy towards Maurice McCabe at the the O’Higgins Tribunal.

Michelle O’Brien, mezzo-soprano, was born and raised under the magic of the Shandon bells in Cork (hence her nickname ‘Shellybelles’).

Authorities say an employee has shot one person and is holding hostages in a restaurant in the US state of South Carolina.

Americans gazed in wonder through telescopes, cameras and protective glasses as the moon blotted out the midday sun in the first full-blown solar eclipse to sweep the US from coast to coast in nearly a century.

HAD William Faulkner been an Irish writer instead of a Nobel laureate born in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1897, he might not have left us his famous line: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

After crashing, the plane went down a steep, wooded hill.

The enduring power of symbolism and the different ways in which society deals with it.

Convicted Charleston church gunman Dylann Roof has pleaded guilty to state murder charges, sparing his victims and their families the burden of a second trial.

Literary inspirations shaped some of this season’s finest fragrances, says Rachel Marie Walsh.

Des Cahill has been eliminated from Dancing With The Stars.

There’ll be no more unnecessary journeys to the Dancing with the Stars studio for Teresa Mannion, after the RTÉ reporter became the latest to leave the Sunday night competition.

A teenager who was stolen from hospital as a newborn baby has been reunited with her birth family as the woman she thought was her mother was charged with her kidnapping.

Convicted South Carolina church gunman Dylann Roof has spoken to the jury for the first time at his death penalty trial, telling jurors there is nothing wrong with him psychologically.

A racist post about US First Lady Michelle Obama has prompted calls for the director of a West Virginia development group and a mayor to be sacked.

A fast-weakening Hurricane Matthew which has been blamed for at least four deaths in the US, all in Florida, continued its march along the Atlantic coast.

A strengthening Hurricane Matthew is steaming towards Florida with winds of 140mph as hundreds of thousands of people board up their homes and flee inland to escape the most powerful storm to threaten the Atlantic coast in more than a decade.

Two Irish cities – Dublin and Galway – have made it into the top six friendliest cities in the world in a major US travel magazine.

Authorities in central Texas have found two more bodies along flooded streams, bringing the death toll from severe weather in the state to six.

Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty for a white man accused of killing nine black parishioners in a racially motivated attack at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, last June, the US Justice Department said.

USA: New Orleans police are investigating an armed robbery in which the assailant walked away with only 35 cents. Two men, aged 33 and 29, were robbed by a man armed with a semi-automatic gun in the city’s Carrollton area.

Here’s a briefing on some of the stories and issues highlighted on irishexaminer.com today, including everything you need to know from Budget 2016.

A dangerous rainstorm drenching the US East Coast has brought more misery to South Carolina – cutting power to thousands, forcing hundreds of water rescues and closing many roads because of floodwater.

AMERICA is in the deadly grip of a self-inflicted epidemic. Already this year, in just nine months, 9,940 people — more or less the population of Dungarvan — have been killed in assault incidents involving guns. Of those, 550 were children, and 1,962 were teenagers. This drip, drip of terrible violence can hardly be surprising as almost half of all guns in civilian ownership on the planet are held by Americans.

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A man killed by an escort is being investigated for links to the unsolved disappearances or murders of women nationwide, authorities said.

An F-16 fighter jet has smashed into a small plane over the US state of South Carolina, killing two and scattering plane parts and debris over a wide area.

An F-16 fighter jet and a small plane have collided in midair over South Carolina, raining down plane parts and debris.

To the isolated, unhappy young mind, white supremacists can seem like welcoming self-help groups, with a ready assurance that others are to blame for all their troubles, writes Stephen L Carter

US President Barack Obama has been strangled by Republican Congressional majorities but is still on the verge of sealing his legacy on the international front, writes Andrew Hammond.

South Carolina politicians planned to introduce a resolution last night to begin a debate on removing the Confederate flag from the State House grounds following the killings last week of nine black churchgoers allegedly by a white gunman.

Having collaborated with Kanye West and Jay Z prior to the release of his solo 2004 debut album, John Legend last night followed the hip hop giants’ trajectory by playing his own standalone show Live at the Marquee.

Hundreds of people packed a sweltering Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston yesterday as it re-opened to worshippers just days after a 21-year-old white gunman shot dead nine black church members.

At Dooley’s Bait shop in Lexington, South Carolina, the talk around the worm bins and minnow tanks was dominated by one subject: Dylann Roof, a previously unremarkable local young man now accused of one of most shocking murders in state history.

Peniel E Joseph sets last week’s massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in the context of a climate of denial in America over national issues of racial inequality

A look at the quirkier side of life as we bring you the most viewed content from the ExamViral section of irishexaminer.com.

A 21-year-old white man has been charged with nine counts of murder for an attack on a historic black South Carolina church, with media reporting that he had hoped his actions would incite a race war in the US.