HIGH MARKS and high fives to the energetic and imaginative campaigners who got the North’s Executive to block a move by Department of Employment and Learning Minister Stephen Farry to cut funding to St Mary’s Teacher Training College in west Belfast. Free article

SIPTU members working in the Local and Community Development Sector held a protest outside the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government (DECLG) in Dublin on Wednesday 18 February to highlight the Government’s drive to privatise community social inclusion programmes (SICAP). Free article

MICHELLE GILDERNEW, the Sinn Féin candidate in May’s Westminster elections and the sitting MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone, hopes to win again and this time be joined other republican women. Premium service article

THERE could be no more fitting place for the launch in February of Sinn Féin’s nationwide ‘Programme of 1916 Commemorative Events’ than Wynn’s Hotel in Dublin, where the Irish Volunteers and Cumann na mBan were founded. And it could have had a no more fitting audience than descendants of the men and women of the 1916 Easter Rising joining Sinn Féin and the Ambassadors of the revolutionary states of Palestine, South Africa and Cuba. Free article

Pat Finucane’s law firm partner, Peter Madden, accused the de Silva Report of wrongly exonerating the British Army’s agent-handling Force Research Unit of any part in the killing of Pat Finucane Free article

A HIGH-POWERED Anti-Fracking Conference held in County Fermanagh on Friday 20 February heard experts condemn fracking as a dangerous practice that raises the “serious threat of serious or irreversible harm to humans or the environment”. Premium service article

TRANSFORMING society and ending of the phenomenon of the working poor needs a strong workers’ movement which encompasses trade unions, political parties and progressive groups, says Sinn Féin Workers’ Rights spokesperson Senator David Cullinane. Free article

Sinn Féin proposals call for tailored internships developed in co-operation with trade unions and Education & Training Boards with employers supported to be best mentors they can be Free article

IRISH TRADE UNIONISTS and campaigners against water charges took their cause to the European Union in February alongside Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan. The delegation discussed the broader issues of the campaign for fair access to clean water services across Europe, how to tackle privatisation, and also had a chance to quiz a representative of the European Commission’s Water Status Unit. Free article

Don’t forget about Gaza, GUE/NGL says: ‘Hands off our right to strike’, Ukraine ceasefire deal welcomed, EU backs country of origin meat labelling and Search and rescue programme needed in Mediterranean, not border police Free article

ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND FISCAL POLICIES are interdependent, and altering one inevitably has a knock-on effect on the others. Similarly, powers over taxation, borrowing for investment and public spending cannot be considered as separate issues. Free article

THE SHEER CONTEMPT for the Irish language on the part of this Fine Gael/Labour Government (and indeed at times an apparent blind hatred of it and its significance for a free Irish people) is becoming more and more apparent. Free article