Former South African political prisoner, Robert McBride is to deliver the annual Bobby Sands Memorial Lecture. Free article

The Sahrawi National Liberation Front (Frente Polisario) has denounced UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's proposal to end the UN' s mediation role between the Moroccan government and the Sahrawi people, calling it a "plot against Sahrawi self determination". Annan suggested that the two parties resolve their near 40-year-old conflict. This proposal is seen to benefit the Moroccan government as it is impossible for the Sahrawi people to negotiate with a government that denies their claim to independence. Free article

Health Minister Mary Harney plans to close Dublin's three Children's Hospitals and build a new hospital along the M50. This proposal includes the closure of Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin. Disguised as a measure to rationalise healthcare for children, it amounts to cutting back on a vital social service. Free article

Nepal's king forced to back down, Iraq, Darfur and Panamá Free article

Sinn Féin's Daithí Doolan described a meeting between Bertie Ahern and Britain's Philip Mountbatten as ill advised. "Many people in Ireland were very uncomfortable when the then Taoiseach John Bruton described the visit by Charles Windsor to this country in 1995 'as the most significant event in his lifetime'. Free article

US trade unionist to read Connolly while behind bars, Vote for strike action at Irish Sugar, Strikers shot and killed in Mexico and Workers' Memorial Day Free article

Sinn Féin's Dublin Mid West representative Joanne Spain has slammed Garda harassment of her Director of Elections as "political policing". Spain's comments come after Féilim Mac Críosta, a Sinn Féin candidate for local elections in 2002 and currently party Director of elections for the constituency of Dublin Mid West, was subjected to a Garda raid while staying at his mother's home. Free article

Sinn Féin councillor, Billy Leonard, has invoked the Freedom of Information Act to uncover details about the case of a homeless Coleraine nationalist who has been refused a house in the town by the Housing Executive. Free article

An Armagh man said his family were lucky to be alive after lumps of concrete fell from a British army Chinook helicopter onto the roof of his Forkhill home on Thursday 20 April. Free article

Sinn Féin MEP Bairbre de Brún has warned that recruitment of interpreters and translators for posts in the EU institutions is crucial to Irish as the 21st EU official language. Free article