IT TOOK a shipping clerk on the quays of Antwerp to expose the reality that King Leopold’s ‘Belgian’ Congo, a supposedly benevolent empire built by a man lauded by anti-slavery groups, was actually a brutal colony built on slavery. Free article

IN THE WEEKS before British Prime Minister Theresa May surprised everyone by calling a Westminster general election, Sinn Féin MPs were engaged in an extensive series of public meetings across England and Scotland under the banner of “Opening the Debate on Irish Unity”. Free article

GOAT FARMER Elizabeth Bradley is a cheese-maker in Ballybrommel in the flatlands below Mount Leinster, in east Carlow. A few kilometers away in Shillelagh, under the gaze of the mountains in west Wicklow, dairy farmer Tom Burgess uses a portion of his summer milk to make cheese. Free article

THE 100th anniversary of the death of 'Forgotten Fenian' William Francis Roantree occurs in February 2018. The Tom Kealy Sinn Féin Cumann in Celbridge-Leixlip, north Kildare, has been busy on the streets with a leafleting campaign in this 150th anniversary year of the Fenian Rising in building public awareness of this historic connection in advance of a major commemorative event to be held in Leixlip with members of his family coming from Australia to take part. Free article

THE recent appearance of whistleblower Jonathan Sugarman in front of the Oireachtas Finance Committee raises once again the role of Ireland’s ‘light-touch’ regulatory system in the 2008 bank crisis. Free article

ACTOR COLM MEANEY – of Star Trek, The Damned United and The Snapper fame – plays the late Martin McGuinness in a new film entitled The Journey, directed by Nick Hamm and written by Colin Bateman. Free article