A Catholic businessman at the centre of a UDA extortion trial has fled his North Belfast home after it was revealed loyalists tried to kill him. Free article

The election of Sinn Féin councillor Cathal Crumley as Mayor of Derry on Monday 5 June changed the face of politics in Derry forever. The political significance of the event was historic, as it marked the end of Sinn Féin's exclusion from the top post in a city that has an overwhelming nationalist majority. The SDLP, as the largest party in Derry for years, chose to elect unionist candidates for the mayoralty rather than support a Sinn Féin nominee. Also, Crumley's election saw Sinn Féin's first mayor in a major city in Ireland since the election of Terence MacSwiney in Cork in 1920, before the country was partitioned. Sitting in the mayor's office with Cathal Crumley was a curious experience. The walls were decorated with the portraits of all the city's `First Citizens' since local government was reformed in 1973 and elections held on the basis of proportional representation (PR) returned a majority nationalist council. Free article

I remember it well, the day I got my hands on a faded photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy in 1979 - ``Future Terrorist Trends.'' Document 37. My eyes scanned the typed lines of high-grade intelligence like a Gnostic scholar who had just been handed a papyrus proving that Christ didn't die on the cross and lived out his life like the rest of us mortals. Free article

I had the honour, long awaited, to attend and speak at a welcome home function for my lifelong friend and comrade Gerry Hanratty in Dublin last Friday night. Gerry had finally received his freedom papers from the Portlaoise prison administration on Monday 22 May. A few days before this, he rang to tell me the good news and informed me he was having a party in a few weeks' time. I was determined not to miss the special occasion. Free article

As Westmeath County Council prepares to destroy a historic ringfort near Mullingar, one family is preparing to defend it, and wondering why there was ever a need to threaten the monument in the first place. Free article

I ndiaidh Fionn Mac Cumhaill, cad é a tharla don bhradán feasa? Sin an cheist atá le plé ag an Draoi Rua an seachtain seo. Free article

FOLLOWING the defeat of the Scottish football team in the World Cup, people in the Lower Falls were terrorised as a foot patrol from the King's Own Scottish Borderers fired round after round of plastic bullets in three seperate locations as they moved through the area. Free article