Boxer Paddy Barnes is looking forward to once again challenging the best in the world for gold at the London Olympics and just before he headed off to training in Dublin and Italy before taking the worldwide stage in London, Paddy took time out to go head to head with Alex Maskey, himself a successful amateur boxer of some renown in his day who lost only a handful out of 75 fights. Free article

WHEN Seán McGlinchey was a republican prisoner in the Cages of Long Kesh, no one would have thought that he would one day be launching this year’s National Hunger Strike Commemorations as Mayor of Limavady Council. Premium service article

AS THE MATCH against Italy drew to a close, the strains of The Fields of Athenry could be discerned in the background, drifting from the stands and into the Polish night air. Free article

General President of the Labourers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), Terry O'Sullivan talked to JOHN HEDGES while he was home in Ireland for the Le Chéile event and Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in Kerry, from where his grandparents emigrated to build a life in America. Premium service article

On the eve of Belfast Mayor Niall Ó Donnghaile term ending (on 1 June), the Short Strand man spoke to An Phoblacht’s PEADAR WHELAN at City Hall about his year in office and the highlights of his term as the public face of one of Ireland’s largest cities. Free article

THERE ISN’T a town or villages across the state that has escaped from the impact of cutbacks to local government funding. Yet three Offaly towns still reeling from a decision which saw their fire stations shut down last year are facing further cutbacks as their libraries opening hours are severely reduced. Premium service article

Is léir le fada an lá go bhfuil bac ar chuid de na heagrais mhaoinithe cuidiú a sholáthar do thionscadail chaipitil fhorbartha Gaeilge de réir na gcritéir lena n-oibríonn siad. Free article

Firstly, there is the threat from the Labour Party Minister for Education, Ruairí Quinn, that “too much time” is being spent on teaching Irish in our schools, despite the obvious failure of the current levels and methods of teaching. This, of course, comes after the now-deferred abolition of the requirement to study Irish at Leaving Cert level as proposed by Taoiseach Enda Kenny. Free article

I WAS BORN into a large working-class Northern Catholic family from the Falls Road in nationalist west Belfast. I grew up in a community burdened by the political weight of state repression and treated as second-class citizens inside gerrymandered electoral boundaries and subjected to the practice of structural discrimination in housing and in the workplace. Premium service article

Giving the same rights as marriage but calling it a ‘partnership’ means that it is a two-tiered system of legal rights. Why even have two pieces of legislation for the same law? Is it to show that there is something different between the two acts? That one means less than the other? Free article