News from the 32: Antrim, Armagh, Carlow, Cavan, Clare, Cork, Derry, Donegal, Down, Dublin, Fermanagh, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Louth, Mayo, Meath, Monaghan, Offaly, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary, Tyrone, Waterford, Westmeath, Wexford, Wicklow

President Barack Obama's Irish American ancestors were pioneers in 19th century health care reform. Film-maker and historian Gabriel Murray, who found Barack Obama’s great-grand uncle's tomb in Kikenny, Ireland, uncovered the surprise links while he was researching his new documentary, “Obama’s Irish Roots” (visit www.olympia-films.co.uk for more information).

Though Labor Day has passed, Irish festivals are still on tap for September and the cooler weather as much of the music shifts to indoor venues. Here’s a look at some things to keep in mind.

Stella O'Leary: Recently in The Irish Times, writer Niall Stanage declared the demise of the Irish vote in America. Stanage, from a Unionist background, may be working with an image of an earlier time, when all Irish American political needs were met by political dynasties, the Kennedys, the O'Neills, the Dodds, and in Chicago, the Daleys.

It is that time of the year again when I am very much in the New York state of mind as the days rapidly approach for another gathering of the trad music universe known as the Catskills Irish Arts Week (CIAW).

Barack Hussein Obama is the descendant of Ohio and Indiana immigrants who came from the borders of Counties

It’s been 10 years now since HBO took a chance on a little drama called “The Sopranos” and changed the face of television. Few could gave guessed its success. But nobody would have predicted: that the Irish would come to dominate critically acclaimed drama all over the cable landscape.

LAST week the world shockingly learned that tens of thousands of Irish children were physically and emotionally abused, beaten, raped and even, survivors say, killed in Catholic Church-run reform schools throughout Ireland from the 1920s right through to the 1990s. After a nine-year investigation, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in church-run institutions produced its final 2006 page report last week. The report makes it clear that hundreds of priests and nuns terrorized and humiliated tens of thousands of Irish children over six decades with the tacit support of the Irish

Maggie Revis, native to Putnam Valley, New York, took to the stage in Belgium this past winter for her debut as the female lead dancer in Michael Flatley’s "The Lord of the Dance." Born into a family of competitve dancers, Maggie began her dance career at the age of three and secured her first win at the Mid-Atlantic American Oireachtas (Regional) Dance Competition in Philadelphia by the age of six.

Peter Kenyon, chief executive of Chelsea FC, was in New York Tuesday to announce the inaugural World Football Challenge.

President Barack Hussein Obama is the newest member of an exclusive club of 20 U.S. presidents who claim Irish ancestry. Obama's Irish roots go back to his great-great-great-grandparent, Falmouth Kearney, who left Moneygall in Co. Offaly in 1850 to seek his fortune as a shoemaker in the New World.

If the new film "He's Just Not That Into You" is to be believed, most women just don't get men. Or rather, they get plenty of men, they just can't get them to stay. Men don't stay because, well, they're men, see.

OCCASIONALLY, I've touted the magnificently flourishing Irish music scene down in Baltimore, and maybe enticed some of you to sample it down there along with the crab cakes and beautifully revived Inner Harbor area.

Well this Friday night, we can save you the tolls on Route 95. If you make your way to Glucksman Ireland House at NYU, you can find three stalwarts of the "Ballmor" trad scene at the next Blarney Star Concert on May 11 at 9 p.

THE Weldon House headquarters of the Michael J. Quill Irish Cultural and Sports Center will soon be abuzz with the arrival of hundreds of traditional Irish music aficionados and students as the days of the Catskills Irish Arts Week (CIAW) draw nigh. The highly successful festival now in its 13th year in the hamlet of East Durham in upstate New York breathes new life into the area so desperately in need of it since jet planes started taking people to more and more distant destinations.

ONE of the latest inductees into the CCE Mid-Atlantic Regional Hall of Fame, fiddler Brendan Mulvihill, succinctly captured the magic of this annual affair in honor of the musicians who blazed the trail and kept the music alive in their respective communities.

He told the crowd of over 200 at the Mineola Irish American Center last Saturday evening as he received an award along with the late Larry Redican that "It was nice to grow up around all the grand music and all the friends" which could easily describe why this is such a special night of remembrance and reunion.

Mulvihill is a man of few words but mighty prowess with the bow as he demonstrated for an audience including friends from the Baltimore and D.

WHILE Billy McComiskey wasn't at the recently completed Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann in Tullamore, Co. Offaly last weekend, his son Sean was and competed in the Senior All-Ireland Ceili Band competition with the Old Bay Ceili Band. The Baltimore-based band was the only American band competing, and they were all inspired by their mentor McComiskey.

YOU couldn't really fit many more people into the Shamrock House on the Thursday night of the Catskills Irish Arts Week in East Durham. Numbers won't really tell the story when traditional Irish music and the friendship and camaraderie that go with it combined to transform the historic old roadhouse into a living testament to the hold the music has over us at times.

We have gotten used to the Thursday evening ceili orchestrated by Billy McComiskey operating on another level each year, but this year would be hard to top no matter how long that custom continues.

ANOTHER very important community for traditional music in America is the mid-Atlantic town of Baltimore, Maryland where they turned out in full force to pay homage to -- and hear some mighty chunes from -- a stellar ensemble led by local citizen and box player Billy McComiskey. It was the hometown CD launch for his Outside the Box recording (www.compassrecords.

THE Donegal X-Press has emerged as one of the premier Irish American roots rock groups in the country, with a reputation built on high-energy that audiences on both sides of the Atlantic are soaking up.

Brad Dunnells (guitar and vocals) and Jason Tinney (harmonica and vocals) began collaborating and writing songs in the late 1990s with the hope of rejuvenating Irish American music. Each band member has a musical side project in the works that take the musicians into areas of hip hop, folk and rock, and Dunnells and Tinney are no exception.

THE fall music season is off to a great start already with many opportunities to take in some great live music and support those who make it. Coming up on Friday, October 17 at 7:30 p.m.

THREE Englishmen were found guilty on Tuesday of possessing drugs for sale worth $700 million off the west Cork coast last year.They were due to be sentenced on Wednesday this week following the biggest and most sensational drugs case ever tried in Ireland.Perry Wharrie, 48, from Essex, Joe Daly, 41, from Kent, and Martin Wanden, 45, also known as Anthony Claud Linden, of no fixed abode, had all denied possessing cocaine and possessing the drug with intent to supply.

The French celebrate Bastille Day on July 14th, marking the end of Monarchy and the beginning of the French Revolution. The storming of the Bastille launched France's establishment as a nation of liberty. Okay.

Irish Eye on Hollywood

Irish-American hunk George Clooney recently said that he plans to return to his ancestral home for a summer of motorcycling. "I am doing a motorbike ride in Ireland this summer," he recently told Dublin radio station FM104. "I hear it rains a lot but I've got the perfect outfit!"

Clooney's last film Leatherheads was a bit of a dud, but he may soon be back in the Oscar nomination form he flashed in Michael Clayton.

Boston Irish For Hillary

ANOTHER major fundraiser for Senator Hillary Clinton by leading Irish Americans will take place in Boston on September 7. It will be the latest in a series of fundraising events that Irish communities across the U.S.

On the day he assumes the highest office in the land, Barack Hussein Obama, the descendant of Ohio and Indiana immigrants who came from the borders of Counties Offaly and Tipperary, will join an exclusive club of twenty Presidents who claim Irish ancestry. President Obama's single Irish great-great-great-grandparent puts him at thirteenth position in an informal ranking, alongside James Polk and just ahead of Richard Nixon, whose Quaker immigrant ancestors also came from Ireland to Ohio and Indiana. But the new president's foreign-born father admits him to a smaller and more distinguished group of four that up to now has been exclusively Irish (the parents of Andrew Jackson and James Buchanan, and the father of Chester Arthur were all born on the island of Ireland).

A significant number of Irish names have the prefix "Gil" or "Guil", including Gilchrist, Gildea, Gilhooly, Gilmartin, Gillespie, Gilfoyle, Gilleece, (Mac) Gillicuddy, Gilpatrick, Gilroy (now McElroy), Gilsenan and Gilvarry. These names were all originally prefixed by Mc and are all based on the Gaelic word "Giolla", which means a youth, attendant, servant or follower. The usual original form is "Mac Giolla", which means "son of the follower or devotee".

O'Hara is an anglicized phonetic rendering of the Irish translation O hEaghra, and is one of the few Irish families to have consistently kept the 'O' before the name. The clan, of a distinguished origin, is descended from Eaghra (pronounced Ara), chief of Luighne (modern Leyny) in County Sligo.

It's 8 a.m. and Fionnula Flanagan arrives for breakfast looking fresh as a daisy in a crisp white shirt.

Listening to Icewagon Flu is like dipping your hands into your trick or treat candy - you never know what flavor you'll encounter, but you'll be guaranteed a sweet treat every time. To prove a point, listen to this pop hodge-podge as described by singer Kevin Adkins.

"We've been recently been doing that eighties tune 'Safety Dance' in our set, along with a bizarre medley of Fine Young Cannibals' 'She Drives Me Crazy,' Pat Benatar's 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot,' and rounding it off with Boston's 'More Than a Feeling.

Ever since the Pogues reunited back in 2001 after a hiatus of almost 17 years, their annual tours have been the hottest tickets of the St. Patrick's Day season.

Thankfully band member Philip Chevron has just successfully beat throat cancer, and he will be packing his guitar to join original members James Fearnley on accordion, Jem Finer on guitar, banjo and saxophone, Darryl Hunt on bass, Shane MacGowan on vocals, Andrew Ranken on drums, Spider Stacy on tin whistle and Terry Woods on mandolin and cittern.