US mayor marshals Leeside festivities

The mayor of San Francisco Edwin Mah Lee served as grand marshal at the Cork St Patrick’s Day parade yesterday, making his first return visit to Leeside, having initially toured the city in 1969 as a high school student.

Mr Lee, who is the first Chinese-American mayor in San Francisco’s history, said he kissed the Blarney Stone on his inaugural trip to Ireland and that luck brought him back to Cork.

More than 2,300 people participated in the Cork parade with overseas representatives including groups from the Philippines, Italy, Poland, China, Hungary, Congo, Ghana, and Sudan. The parade attracted more than 50,000 people to Cork city centre with 80,000 expected to have attended the three-day St Patrick’s festival in the city which concludes today.