THE Irish Government has claimed the state is merely acting in accordance with a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution but Pádraig Mac Lochlainn is unconvinced. He points out a number of UNSC resolutions on Palestine calling for immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territories and the removal of settlements. Every day these resolutions are breached by Israel, he says. “Yet we aren’t sending Irish Defence Forces personnel into Palestine to help the people there. So UNSC resolutions do not require the Government to act,” he says. Premium service article

THE European Parliament is considering a number of reports that that could have far-reaching effects on legislation for public health, including smoking and tobacco products, and bio-economics and GM crops. Free article

THERE WAS standing room only in Gulladuff Community Centre in County Derry on Saturday night, 23 March, when 200 people gathered to remember the victims of an indiscriminate murder attack by unionist gunmen — working in direct collusion with British state forces — in Castlerock on the morning of Thursday 25 March 1993. The attack left four workmen dead and one man fighting for his life. Premium service article

SOUTH ARMAGH was a hive of activity on the first weekend in March as local republicans organised a series of events to commemorate the lives of two local Volunteers who died in a premature explosion 25 years ago. Premium service article

WITH the memory of Seachtain na Gaeilge beginning to fade away it is perhaps timely to take stock of the situation of Gaeilge — the Irish language. While Irish is undoubtedly THE national language of this nation, it has been a minority language since the end of the Great Hunger of the 1840s following centuries of violence, persecution, marginalisation and discouragement by the English colonial authorities, and then decades of lip-service, neglect and often outright hostility by the 26-county state. Free article