Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams has revealed that he has received confirmation from the IRA leadership that a discussion on his 6 April initiative has been authorised by the Army. "For the past four months the Peace Process has been in freefall," said Adams. "On 6 April, in an attempt to prevent this backward slide, I made a direct appeal to the men and women of the IRA to commit themselves to purely political and democratic activity. Free article

Chrissie Nic Giolla Mhín, who aims to win a seat for Sinn Féin in West Belfast in next month's local government elections, had the support of some very prominent republican activists as she canvassed in Andersonstown last week. Free article

Relatives bereaved by the devastating legacy of suicide held a protest outside a health trust meeting in West Belfast on Wednesday to highlight the alarming rise in the number of suicides across the Six Counties. Free article

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International is backing the Finucane family, who have called on international judicial figures to refuse to sit on any inquiry set up by the British Government into the solicitor's killing under the recently enacted Inquiries Act 2005. Free article

Justice for the Forgotten, representing the bereaved and the survivors of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of May 1974, have criticised the form of investigation announced by the Dublin Government into the missing Garda files on the bombings. Free article

The top English police officer seconded from the West Midlands force to reinvestigate the 1974 killing of Independent Nationalist Councillor Patsy Kelly, has returned to England. PSNI sources confirmed that Detective Superintendent Andrew Hunter has been released from his post to return to work in the West Midlands Free article

Six-County elections are unique in the voting world, not just for the fact that there are an awful lot of elections and that the voting system changes from poll to poll but that many of the elections are to institutions in which the Six-County members either don't have any power or do not actually meet in any meaningful way, which was what happened to the 1996 Forum, and has so far to the 2003 Assembly. There was also the 1975 Convention and the 1982 Assembly. Free article

The third part of Robbie Smyth's 2005 Westminster Election Preview. Free article