Clonakilty Sinn Féin Councillors Paul Hayes (left) and Cionnaith Ó Súilleabháin (third left) recently hosted a group of Basque young people who were visiting Ireland. The two councillors took the group to the site of the Battle of the Big Cross, just outside Clonakilty, which was the only rising in Munster in 1798, where they presented each of them with a souvenir book published in 1998, the bicentenary of the rising. Free article

One of Dublin's most familiar tourist attractions will soon be demolished, if Fianna Fáil TD Donie Cassidy gets his way. Cassidy, who owns numerous hotels in Dublin City, also owns the building on Granby Row, which is currently leased to the National Wax Museum Free article

The official opening of Belleek Fort Guesthouse in Ballyshannon, County Donegal on Wednesday 25 August also marked, to the day, the 80th anniversary of the handing over of the Belleek Fort to the Irish Free State soldiers by the British Army. The Fort had been occupied in the 1920s by the British Army, the Irish Free State Army and the anti-Treaty IRA. It was captured by the British Army on 7 June 1922 and handed back to the Irish Free State Army on 25 August 1924. The Fort was under the command at one time of Captain Thomas Daly, father of Bishop Edward Daly. Free article

Jean McBride, mother of murdered Belfast teenager Peter McBride, has welcomed the intervention of a number of US Senators who have called for an investigation into the award of a US Defence Department Iraq contract to a firm led by Tim Spicer, a former Scots Guards officer who was CO in Belfast when her son was shot dead. Free article