"NOBODY earning €204 a week can be asked to carry the can for the mess that this government and the banking and business elite have conspired to create". This was the first response from Sinn Féin Finance spokesperson Arthur Morgan to this week's emergency budget. Morgan told the Dáil that, "There is no justice in this budget". Free article

On this the 93rd anniversary of the 1916 Rising the leadership of Sinn Féin extends its solidarity to the families of all our patriot dead. Free article

AN attempt by The Sunday Times last weekend (5 April) to call into question the republican leadership's handling of the 1981 H-Blocks Hunger Strike by publishing British Government documents released under the Freedom of Information Act has actually boomeranged on the reporter who wrote the story, Liam Clarke. [Liam Clarke, after being challenged by the Bobby Sands Trust, had to admit last month that a quote he attributed to Bobby Sands and used in a lurid headline - "Sinn Féin is turning into Sands's dodo" - wasn't said by Bobby Sands.] Free article

Hundreds of people joined a march in Belfast on Wednesday, 8 April in support of the 210 Visteon workers sacked on 31 May. The staff, who had been employed by US motoring giant Ford until it set up spin-off company Visteon in 2000, were entering their second week occupying the west Belfast car parts factory site in protest at the companies' breach of redundancy terms. Free article

SINN FÉIN President Gerry Adams entered Gaza on Wednesday morning at the start of a two-day visit to the area and as part of a wider visit to Israel and the west Bank. Adams had spent his first day in the region visiting Sderot and Kfar Aza - a town and Kibbutz - in southern Israel that have been the targets for rocket attacks from Gaza. Free article

DURING Israel's three-week long offensive on Gaza launched on 27 December, the Israeli Army used internationally-banned weapons according to foreign military and medical experts. American-made white phosphorus shells were used in populated areas across the Gaza Strip, home to about 1.5 million people. Dr Nafez Abu Shaban, head of the Burns Unit at Shifa Hospital, Gaza's largest medical centre, has treated dozens of patients who suffered severe burns. He is keeping a piece of phosphorus covered under sand in a jar to prevent it from being exposed to oxygen. Free article