Gerry Adams has described remarks by the British Secretary of State Shaun Woodward in relation to the recent political impasse in the political process and the failure to devolve powers over policing and justice from Britain to the North of Ireland as "banal and silly". Free article

In a New Year message Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams said: Free article

AROUND 2,000 activists from around the world have marked the one-year anniversary of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, which left more than 1,400 Palestinians dead, by converging on Gaza's borders with Egypt and trying to enter the besieged territory. Irish solidarity activists are among those who have joined the Viva Palestina aid convoy and the Gaza Freedom March demanding an end to the economic siege of the Gaza Strip, home to 1.5 million people. Free article

UNIONIST paramilitary group the UDA claimed this week that it has decommissioned all of its weapons. Representatives of the loyalist Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG) told journalists that the UDA had concluded its business with General John de Chastelain of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD). UPRG leader Frankie Gallagher denied suggestions that the decommissioning was bought as a result of a financial offer from the British Government. Free article

VULNERABLE developing countries and environmentalists have reacted with fury to the outcome of the Cop15 climate change summit held in Copenhagen in December. The summit failed to come close to achieving an ambitious, legally binding global treaty on reducing carbon emissions and represented a step backward from progress that had been made in previous climate discussions. Speaking to An Phoblacht this week, conference delegate and Sinn Féin MEP Bairbre de Brún said that political leaders of powerful industrialised countries have blamed the summit's failure on developing countries and emerging large economies such as China refusing to 'play their part'. Free article

In the week before Christmas many people will have been shocked by a deeply moving UTV Insight programme which contained allegations of sexual abuse by Liam Adams, a brother of Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams, against his daughter Áine Tyrell. Free article