Athletes come to the Special Olympics Ireland to compete and have fun. And 100 will win places on Team Ireland for the world games in Los Angeles next year.

Colaiste Phobal Roscrea 2-16 Cross and Passion College 0-10

Corydalis is the gift that keeps on giving... and giving, Charlie Wilkins reports

SIPTU is demanding an urgent meeting with the operators of two nursing homes over the alleged non-payment of staff wages for two weeks.

President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle both hugged his distant cousin Henry Healy on the street outside Obama's ancestral home in Moneygall, Co Offaly.

A second Irish village has discovered a parish register with records of the ancestors of Barack Obama.

A CAMPAIGN has been launched to have Shinrone in Co Offaly included in Barack Obama’s visit to Ireland in recognition of the US president’s ancestral ties to the village.

BEING the first black president of the United States and of Kenyan origin, perhaps the most unexpected connection was that a man with such an exotic name, in the most powerful job in the world, would have links to a small village in Co Offaly.

THE DONEGAL Mini Stage Rally in Glenties fell victim to the weather conditions despite the heroic work of the organisers who salted the roads over which the event was to traverse.

WITH a €185,000 asking price for two matching old stone cottages, buyers mightn’t need to be money launderers looking for a place to plank hot cash near Birr.

TOM KENNY and Eoin Cadogan have shaken off injury worries to make the Cork starting side for Sunday’s Munster SHC quarter-final in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, as manager Denis Walsh makes three personnel and three positional changes for the clash against Tipperary.

Ted Cunningham painted himself as the victim in the witness box, writes Liam Heylin.

The man accused of money-laundering over £3m from the Northern Bank robbery denied confessing to gardaí that he had told Phil Flynn he could move £10m or £11m.

THE prosecutor in the money-laundering trial in Cork described the presence in Navan of Phil Flynn on the same date that the accused received £500,000 in cash from Bulgarian business associates as an interesting coincidence.

IT WASN’T easy to look star struck at Carnoustie yesterday as a miserable, unrelenting mist — or haar as the Scots like to call it — swept over the great old course from the nearby North Sea.

US presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s ancestry has been traced back to a shoemaker in a small Irish village.

CRUISING on the Shannon last week, auctioneer Paddy Jordan was enjoying time off after another record-breaking summer farm sale.

BIG, flat and beautiful, is the short story on Scorduff Farm, at Brosna, Co Offaly, which has hit the market with a fanfare.

OFFALY legend Brian Whelahan will not start Sunday’s Leinster SHC semi-final against Kilkenny at Croke Park.

Wexford 2-13 Cork 1-13

GUEST’S shop with its central cast iron stove was a focal point in the village of Shinrone, Co Offaly, for over a 100 years.