Calls for the Orange Order to end their siege of the Garvaghy Road have intensified this week as loyalist violence has erupted in Portadown and Belfast. Free article

Seán MacManus became the first Sinn Féin mayor anywhere in the 26 Counties since 1967 on Monday, 3 July, when he was elected to serve as mayor of Sligo. That same evening, Sinn Féin's Brian McKenna was elected as chairperson of Monaghan County Council. Further, Michael Colreavy is expected to be elected chairperson of Leitrim County Council next week. These advances for Sinn Féin follow the election in June of Sinn Féin Councillor Cathal Crumley as mayor of Derry, the first Sinn Fein mayor in the Six Counties since partition. Free article

The Red Hand Defenders and supporting loyalist bands ignored restrictions placed upon a march in County Down last weekend. In direct contravention of rulings by the Parades Commission, loyalist marchers carried emblems of loyalist paramilitary groups, chanted sectarian slogans, threw stones and bottles, attempted to breach a barrier into a nationalist area and refused to disperse at the allotted time. Free article

Just one week after a British Army helicopter crash landed in South Armagh, stirring local anger, two aircraft landed in a residential area of Crossmaglen. Free article

South Dublin County Councillor Seán Crowe, speaking at an anti-corruption march and rally in Dublin on Saturday, 1 July, said that the communities he represents are angry at the scale of corruption uncovered by the tribunals. ``Some people will be run up to Mountjoy for stealing a a few pounds. But other people won't go to jail, not even for taking bribes of tens of thousands of pounds, because they have the right friends in high places,'' he said. Free article

A public meeting took place in Derry last week to take stock of he first phase of the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday. Free article