Ireland's Eye: What's going on in the old sod this week

A look at news from around Ireland

Green Around the World
THE world's most famous landmarks will go green next month to mark St. Patrick's Day.

Niagara Falls, the TV tower in Berlin's Alexanderplatz, the London Eye and Table Mountain in South Africa are among some of the well-known sites that will be lit up on March 17.

Tourism Ireland said the celebrations were part of a promotional drive to grow overseas tourism.

Niall Gibbons, the body's chief executive, said more than 70 million people around the world claim links with the island of Ireland.

"St. Patrick's Day is a truly unique opportunity to reconnect them with their heritage and to showcase our wonderful tourism offering to a huge global audience," he said.

"People across the world instantly identify St. Patrick's Day with Ireland, and that heightened profile allows us to put the Ireland holiday experience in the spotlight -- from London to Sydney and Stockholm to New York."

The Sky Tower in Auckland will be the first building to turn green when it reaches midnight, followed by the iconic Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai and landmarks across Europe and the U.S., including the Empire State Building and the White House fountain.

Celebrations will span Great Britain, mainland Europe, North America, Australia, as well as developing markets such as China, India and South Africa -- with an advert for Ireland shown on Times Square, which could be seen by up to 1.5 million New Yorkers.

Tourism Minister Leo Varadkar said St. Patrick's Day provides a unique shop window for Ireland around the world, for Irish tourism and for trade and investment.

A four-day festival will also be staged in Dublin, featuring an outdoor ceili, traditional music concerns, and a St. Patrick's Day parade through the capital.

The Belfast Telegraph

Spooky Market
SOMETHING very spooky is happening in Limerick’s 200-year-old Milk Market.

Strange, glowing lights have been captured on one of the market’s 15 CCTV cameras, which some believe are ghostly spirits, or orbs, and which management have described as something that “defies logic.”

The footage emerged when staff handed over tapes from CCTV cameras to Gardai (police) after the market was broken into in the early hours of Friday, January 27.

When staff studied the footage, strange luminous lights were clearly visible from 4 a.m. on one particular camera, camera six, which is located in the arch above the main gate into the market, which itself has original stone work from when it was built in 1792 by the Perry family.

For more than an hour -- and right up until the second that the break-in occurs -- the lights are plainly visible on the cameras, jetting in and out of the shot, changing speeds and moving in irregular directions.

“We have looked at the footage. It defies logic. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. We have looked at it and it leaves us baffled, very baffled,” Milk Market manager David O’Brien said.

“I am not somebody who goes down the road of thinking it is hocus pocus stuff, but everybody who has seen the footage is mesmerized by it.”

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Nster.com