Secretary of State Hillary Clinton played a major role in securing the release of Irish priest Fr. Michael Sinnott. The priest was kidnapped 32 days ago by a radical group of Islamic militants called the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Irish America magazine, our sister publication, celebrated 25 years in style last week. We started all those years ago with a cover story that featured five leading Irish Americans - Tip O’Neill, Ronald Reagan, John McEnroe, Maureen O’Hara and Ted Kennedy.

Niall O'Dowd: Somewhere in Australia there's an Irish lad called Rowan McCormick who broke Maureen Dowd's heart. When she went back in the early 1970s to visit her homestead in County Clare, hard by the majestic Cliffs of Moher, she met him and fell madly in love.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has announced plans to open an operational center in Belfast that will create up to 400 jobs.

Caroline Kennedy will headline an Irish rally for New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, who is facing a tough battle in his re-election race. The rally will take place on October 21st in Belmar, New Jersey. The town is in the center of the Spring Lake area, which is a large center of Irish American population.

SECRETARY of State Hillary Clinton has made it crystal clear in her visit to Ireland that she and the Obama administration are giving the Irish peace process a very high priority indeed. It is also very welcome that she dropped the ludicrous “no special deal” nonsense when she talked about the undocumented Irish and the need to address that issue.

Stella O’Leary of Irish American Democrats and hotelier John Fitzpatrick, a long-time backer of the Clintons joined

NOW that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Irish visit is over, and she most definitely acted as negotiator and envoy herself in Northern Ireland, as well as appointing economic envoy Declan Kelly, it is interesting to note who got this story right and who got it wrong in the preceding few months.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton underlined the importance of continued economic development in the North during her address to the Northern Ireland Assembly in Stormont Castle on Monday.

U.S. Secretary Hillary Clinton addressed The Stormont Assembly on Monday and urged all concerned to make continuing efforts to secure long-lasting peace.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has thanked the Irish government for accepting two prisoners from Guantanamo Bay.

Hillary Clinton met with Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Brian Cowen and President Mary McAleese and discussed the situation of Irish undocumented in the U.S. as well as Northern Ireland and global economic issues.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Dublin today and Belfast tomorrow amid speculation that she can help ensure a dramatic breakthrough in the current impasse in Northern Ireland.

Hillary Clinton will face a full blown crisis in the peace process when she visits Northern Ireland this weekend. Sinn Fein and the DUP are at loggerheads over when policing and justice powers will be devolved to the Northern Irish government from the British parliament.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit Northern Ireland next week, as exclusively reported on IrishCentral.com. Clinton will meet with political leaders for talks about the North's future.

The father of a Belfast man who was murdered by a Loyalist paramilitary group in 1997 has secured his plea to have a U.S. congressional hearing into his son’s murder next month.

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

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to visit Dublin, Belfast and London on October 11th and 12th, IrishCentral has learned.

EXCLUSIVE: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced that Irish native Declan Kelly, 41, will be the Obama administration's economic envoy to Northern Ireland, a position first created for Sen. George Mitchell during the Clinton administration.

It is quite an image... Maureen Dowd, scourge of every president since Poppy Bush and, arguably, the most powerful journalist in America thanks to her must-read column in The New York Times, talking of the road not taken, living a quiet life as a barkeep's wife back in Clare. Maybe that image isn’t so fanciful, though.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to visit Ireland in mid-October according to sources close to the Clinton camp. And it is expected that she will be accompanied by the new economic envoy, who is expected to be named shortly. Sources say Clinton will use the trip as an opportunity to strongly dismiss reports that the U.S government is paying little attention to Ireland.

Once there were nine siblings, and now just Jean Kennedy Smith is left from the children of Joe and Rose FitzGerald Kennedy, who went on to become the most powerful political family in America. We forgot what the Kennedys accomplished for Irish Americans. They grew up in an era when “No Irish Need Apply” signs were still up in some New England neighborhoods.

It was his handshake I’ll never forget, solid and strong. The event was an Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform (ILIR) rally in Washington D.C. in March 2006. Although I was slightly intimidated by the enormity of the situation and those all around me, I was somewhat comforted by the presence of Senator Ted Kennedy and his vivacious handshake.

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.

After 17 months behind bars in Texas, a former IRA prisoner who has lived in the U.S. for over 25 years is due to be deported to Ireland at the end of this week -- and is facing more jail time in Ireland if Northern Ireland politician Jeffrey Donaldson has anything to do with it.

I take very strong issue with the piece by Niall Stanage – “Clinton saga highlights ludicrous notions about importance of Irish in America” in the August 8th edition of The Irish Times.

First Minister of Northern Ireland and Democratic Unionist Party leader Peter Robinson has written a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing his disquiet over the California Democratic Party's adoption of a resolution to support a United Ireland.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will add the Northern Ireland peace process to her extensive

Declan Kelly, the Tipperary-born entrepreneur who is a leading advisor to several of the world's leading CEOs, has announced his decision to resign from FTI, the international consulting company that acquired his company, Financial Dynamics in 2006. Kelly, 40, and FTI, the $3bn company with operations in over 20 countries, announced on Monday that he had notified them of his intention to resign to pursue other non-commercial opportunities outside the company.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to personally handle the role of peace envoy to Ireland, the Irish Voice and IrishCentral have learned.

Irish American congressman Peter King today slammed the late Michael Jackson as a “pervert” and has called on the media to stop “glorifying” him. The New York congressman said Jackson was a "low life." "He was a pervert, a child molester; he was a pedophile," storms King in a two-minute video he made outside an American Legion Hall near his office on Long Island.

The 27th U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Dan Rooney has arrived in the Emerald Isle today to take up his post and move into his residence at Phoenix Park, Dublin.

Dan Rooney was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to Ireland by Senator Hillary Clinton in a ceremony that took place in the Treaty Room at the State Department today.

This week Cathal Breslin will make his U.S. debut as a classical pianist in an almost sold out show at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Welcome to our second annual Most Influential Women list, dedicated to saluting the ladies who make things happen in all walks of Irish-American life.

President Obama has sent the nomination of Dan Rooney, former Chairman of the Pittsburgh Steelers, to be Ambassador to Ireland to the Senate for confirmation. His hearings will take place in the next few weeks, and if confirmed as expected, he will be in Ireland by July 4th.

The cost of living in Ireland has dropped by the steepest amount in over 75 years, year on year, according to new statistics from the Central Statistics Office there, which were released on Friday. Experts say the slide will continue.

President Obama's Irish roots: Click Here Full text of President Obama's recent speech at Notre Dame: Click here

Bill Clinton has not forgiven Ted or Caroline Kennedy for their support of Barack Obama during the heated primary fight for the Democratic nomination last year. The New York Times magazine reports on Sunday that Clinton felt he “did so much” for the Kennedys and that they had become 'family.' He felt deeply betrayed when they endorsed Obama instead of his wife.

Irish President Mary McAleese addressed the 2009 graduating class at Mount Holyoke, the prestigious women’s liberal arts college in Massachusetts, this past weekend. McAleese, who was awarded an honorary degree from the College, pointed to the combined efforts of men and women in the Northern Ireland Peace Process as an example of how the world should function – as “a bird flying on two wings,” which “has a better chance of getting somewhere that a bird flying on one.”

THE alarm bells should have gone off loud and clear when President Barack Obama named Ireland as one of three countries where the activities of Hillary cites North example

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is using the Northern Ireland analogy as an example of how important it is to encourage guerilla groups to become part of the political process.

The decision by Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter to change parties from the GOP to the Democrats bodes well for immigration reform, especially if the move provides a filibuster proof majority on the Democratic bill in the senate.

The Irish nun known as 'Mother Teresa of Philly' made No 49 on Time's 100 Most Influential People beating out Oprah, the Pope and Hillary Clinton. Bono didn't even make the cut!

New York will only embrace its new Archbishop if he is himself. But he's off to a good start.

Sheldon Filger, a writer at the Huffington Post, warns that the Irish economy is in free fall. But Sheldon is no economist - he is a writer of soft-core porn.

An Irish American kid from Boston was being hailed as a hero today after leading his unarmed crew to regain control of their ship which had been attacked by pirates in Somalia.

How can someone in receipt of $800,000 a year lecture the rest of us on today's Budget? The bill for the crazy decade is coming due but why does the burden never fall on the rich?

The star power couple in the Obama administration, Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein, are expecting their first child

He would be 49 now, close to Barack Obama in age and sharing this moment with him. Maybe he'd be in elective politics, perhaps as Hillary's replacement in the Senate. Or he might even have been thinking to run for the job his father once held. We will never know.