Actor John Cusack says he’s proud of his Irish roots. The Illinois native was asked about his background, and he replied that he always “felt” Irish.

Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen has urged workers to embrace reform of the public service rather than viewing it as a threat. He made it clear that a shake-up of the system has to happen in order to make dramatic savings to reduce the country's debt.

For Irish woman Angela Nolan and English man Liam Adcock, Irish rugby was their true love. That was, until they met each other on Facebook. Now, both of their statuses read: “Married.”

While familly continues to search for Stephen Gately’s will, friends close to the star have begun to fear that the singer never wrote one in the first place.

A new book by an American author is claiming that Eamon De Valera was so afraid of losing his life during the 1916 Rising that he turned informant for the British.

Sligo is set to host an Air Fiddle Championship as part of the Sligo Live music and arts festival, which runs from October 22-26.

Irish American activists are seeking to make the Irish government responsible for the maltreatment of young Irish women forced to work in Laundries. According to Mari Steed, spokeswoman of the group Justice for Magdalenes, the Irish government was complicit in the abuse the women suffered and owes them an apology and compensation.

WITH VIDEO: Though they are arguably the most hated contestants ever in the history of British talent show “The X Factor,” the Irish “terrible twins” sure are getting plenty of attention.

Actress Anna Friel’s nude scene in the West End production of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is causing quite a stir.

Tony and Linda Sutherland will be guests of Ryan Tubridy on RTE’s The Late Late Show tonight to talk of the recent death of their Olympic bronze medal winning son Darren, who took his own life in

Tragic Irish boxer Darren Sutherland was supposed to see a top psychologist the same day he was found dead in London. The 27-year-old Olympic star had been on the verge of giving up boxing, saying that he felt adrift in the boxing world. His trainer, Brian Lawrence, said that Sutherland had "poured his heart out" just 10 days ago over his fears for his future.

“[T]he Kennedys were the spiritual and political leaders of the most nauseating, ignorant and sentimental of any US ethnic minority.” Do you recognize yourselves in that description? Didn't think so, but that's how the Irish Independent's Kevin Myers described us this week.

The collapse of the bridge in County Dublin on the Dublin-Belfast rail line will cause chaos for over 20,000 commuters now that Ireland’s transportation authority says the line will be shut down for months.

Not content with cheating the Irish taxman out of millions of euro each year, U2 are now responsible for a major embarrassment for the GAA.

Three people, including a 36-year-old Irishman, were taken to the hospital on Saturday due to injuries received in the fifth day of the Pamplona bull run, just one day after a Spanish man was gored to death at the event.

The publishers of the Irish Independent in Ireland have warned their financial adviser Deloitte to be "on standby" in case their latest debt deal talks collapse.

Dublin is now one of the gang murder capitals in Europe. In just 10 years, Dublin has achieved the dubious distinction of being home to some of the most violent gangs in

Johnny Depp,about to hit the big screen playing bank robber John Dillinger in “Public Enemies,” may yet bring Sebastian Dangerfield, the lead character of JP Donleavy’s classic novel “The Ginger Man” to life on the big screen.

Every Irish journalist remembers where they were the day that Veronica Guerin was shot dead in Dublin.

Cathal Dervan: The world and his mother appears fascinated with Padraig Harrington’s swing ahead of this week’s U.S. Open at Bethpage on Long Island, but one man isn’t worried – Harrington himself.

Irish club owners are lamenting the sobering up of Ireland’s most famous party boy actor. Farrell entered rehab in August 2006, and has been off the drink since.

The thousands of concert-goers expected at Dublin’s Croke Park for U2’s concerts on July 24, 25 and 27 has caused the stadium to heighten security and go forth with plans to shut down its GAA museum for the three dates.

Sinn Fein’s Mary Lou McDonald has been criticized for allowing her campaign office to sell IRA trinkets.

Father Edward Flanagan, founder of “Boys Town” made famous by the Spencer Tracy movie, attacked Ireland's reform schools in 1946 and was roundly dismissed for doing so by the Irish establishment.

Ireland, with 3,000 miles of open Atlantic to the West, offers some of the best surf conditions in the world. Sea Fever, a documentary, covers the history of Irish surfing from the early 1960s to the present.

An Irish man has discovered it’s better to play golf and draw social welfare than hold down a full time job in Ireland these days.

When producer Stephen Shannon made “Another Way of Being There” with his band Halfset, the most he had hoped for was a “review in The Irish Times and a few sales in some record

At first glance, the great American author Henry James would not seem a natural subject for Irish novelist Colm Tibn. Hailed by the Irish Independent as "the best Irish writer of his generation," Tibn has written on a wide range of subjects, but his books have generally been rooted in aspects of the Irish and/or Catholic experience. His last novel "The Blackwater Lightship" explored three Irish generations and was a finalist for the 1999 Booker Prize and the 2001 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, while his non-fiction books include "Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border" and "The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe.

NOW you can call him Lord of the Dads - Michael Flatley's wife Niamh gave birth to the couple's first child, a boy they've named Michael St. James Flatley, last Thursday in Cork.

The little fella made his debut just after noon that day, weighing in at 8 pounds and an ounce.

EVANNA Lynch, the young actress from Co. Louth currently co-starring in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as Luna Lovegood, has been spending her time since the movie's hectic opening honing her talent as a writer. Evanna, who'll turn sweet 16 next week, has spent part of the summer at an Irish school for promising teen writers, but competing with Harry creator J.

FINALLY, justice has been served for Michael Flatley, who suffered through the indignity of having his sterling reputation dragged through the mud by a gold-digger who falsely charged that he raped her in a Las Vegas hotel room in 2002. The rape claim never saw the light of day in a criminal courtroom, of course - the so-called "victim," Tyna Robertson, was unable to fool police - but Robertson and her pit bull attorney, Dean Mauro of Illinois, attempted to extort a pile of money from the Lord of the Dance creator/star unless he paid up.

Michael didn't get to where he is today by standing idly by, so he fought back and slapped the pair with a couple of multi-million dollar lawsuits for filing a false rape claim, attempted extortion and emotional distress.

DIRECTOR/screenwriter Quentin Tarantino had a blast in Dublin last weekend, so much so that he blew off a scheduled appearance on the country's top-rated gabfest, the Late Late Show, in favor of a party at the Old Jameson Distillery. Can't say we blame him for that, but Quentin was in town to promote a film that bombed big time here when it was released earlier this year, so passing up an opportunity to sell tickets on a talk show mightn't have been too wise.

The famous U.

HE owns sumptuous homes around the world and every other luxury item you could think of, and now Lord of the Dance creator and star Michael Flatley is poised to add another choice nugget to his list of holdings. Reports out of Ireland say that Michael will plunk down more than ?4 million for 56 acres on a Kerry island called Rossmore. The views are simply stunning - the Atlantic Ocean and the South Kerry coastline - and Michael has big plans to make it into what will undoubtedly be one of the most fabulous holiday homes in Ireland.

CECELIA Ahern really has the Midas touch. The 26-year-old daughter of Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, a best-selling novelist with a batch of international hits to her name, can now add American TV hotshot to her list of accomplishments. Cecelia is the creator of the new ABC comedy series Samantha Who? which has scored some pretty impressive ratings since its debut a couple of weeks ago.

KENNETH Branagh was back in Belfast last month to promote his latest movie, Sleuth, and to reminisce about the time he spent growing up in the Northern Ireland city where he was born.

Branagh and his family left the North for England when he was nine years old, and in an interview with the Irish Independent he noticed the positive changes that have taken root since his departure 37 years ago.

Belfast, he said, holds a "certain amount of melancholy" for him, especially as his parents have passed away.

UNIVERSITY College Dublin hosted Will Ferrell last month, and now Trinity College will confer an honor this week on another A-lister, Oscar winner Helen Mirren, originally British but maintaining a deep love for the Irish.

The college's Philosophical Society will make Helen an honorary patron, providing the star with a great excuse to head over for a quick break.

"One of my ex-boyfriends went to Trinity College, many, many moons ago," Mirren told the Irish Independent, "but now I can boast to him, 'I've been to Trinity College as well.

MEL Gibson, beware of The Passion of the Irish Jewish Community. The star, who launched a notorious drunken tirade against Jews while being hauled off to the slam for drunk driving a couple of summers ago in LA, is due in Dublin this weekend to accept the Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema Award at the Irish Film and Television Awards, but a rabbi in Ireland is furious that Mad Mel should be placed on such a pedestal. "We find it very puzzling.

THE campaign to protect the historic Hill of Tara in Co. Meath from being bulldozed to make way for a new highway has certainly attracted its share of high-profile supporters, and one of them is, shall we say, slightly perturbed that U2 frontman and noted Africa activist Bono hasn't made his presence felt on the issue.

Actor Stuart Townsend, holidaying in Paris last week with his Oscar-winning girlfriend - sorry, "wife," as he likes to call her - Charlize Theron, expressed his wish that Bono would use his worldwide fame to further draw attention to the Hill of Tara cause.

BRITISH actress Minnie Driver, pregnant with her first child, took her activism on behalf of breast cancer awareness to Dublin last week, where she launched a tote bag specially designed for Irish department store Brown Thomas by Diane von Furstenberg, with all proceeds going towards the 2008 Fashion Targets Breast Cancer campaign.

Irish ladies responded enthusiastically at the chance to own a von Furstenberg bag for only *45, as the large yellow totes flew off the shelves after Driver's introduction. She involved herself in the campaign after losing her two grandmothers to breast cancer.

INDEPENDENCE Day will forever have a new meaning for Samantha Power, the Irish-born, Harvard educated ex-advisor to Senator Barack Obama who was deep sixed from the campaign when she called Hillary Clinton a monster.

July 4 was the day Power, 38, shed her independence and married Cass Sunstein, another Harvard educated brainiac who is one of the nation's most respected legal scholars. The groom is also a close ally of Obama, and the newly married couple met while Power was working for Obama in Chicago.

HIS latest critically acclaimed movie Vicky Christina Barcelona was filmed in Spain, and his previous three efforts were made in the U.K. Now Woody Allen has his sights set firmly on another location - Ireland.

Billy Keane, the sports columnist for the Irish Independent (and also son of beloved author John B.) also has a new historical novel out. "The Last of the Heroes" is a comical, yet touching look at one family as it struggles with the rest of Ireland throughout the 20th century, from the hard years of the Irish civil war to the Celtic Tiger and the new millennium.

OUR old pal Michael Flatley is expanding his real estate empire again. Though they say there's a housing slump in Ireland, Michael is taking the opposite view and building a new holiday crib that will naturally be huge and spectacular.

Last year he laid out $6 million for a 56 acre tract of land on Rossmore Island which is just off the south Kerry coast.

IT'S been quite a summer for Sarah Jessica Parker. She starred in one of the season's top box office hits, Sex and the City: The Movie, and was later undoubtedly rocked by reports that her husband Matthew Broderick cheated in the city with a twentysomething youngster while she was on location. But all seems well with the Broderick clan these days.

DANIEL CASSIDY

1943-2008

Writer, musician, college professor and Irish America Top 100 honoree Daniel Cassidy died on October 11 at his home in San Francisco. The author of the book "How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads" succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 65.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Dan Cassidy boasted Irish heritage on both his parents' sides.

"I am in graduate school in New York and will be finished in a year. I would then like to live in Ireland. Would my degree from the City University of New York (CUNY) be worth anything in Ireland?"

Disgraced former Anglo Irish chairman Sean Fitzpatrick refused to attend a meeting of a parliamentary banking watchdog investigating his financial affairs this week as new details emerged of an eight-year borrowing spree that shareholders in his bank claimed cost them their life savings. Fitzpatrick's snub to the all-party Economic and Regulatory Affairs Commit-tee coincided with revelations that the Irish Nationwide building society gave tens of millions worth of sterling and dollar loans to him as part of his scheme to hide up to €122 million in borrowings from Anglo Irish. The loans were part of a series of transfers of cash between Irish Nationwide and Anglo Irish to conceal his borrowings from auditors as well as from shareholders and the public.

A former Irish ambassador to the U.S., Dermot Gallagher, is at the center of controversy over his appointment as head of a police "watchdog" body just days after his retirement from the civil service.

Conor Cruise-O'Brien, former Labour Party politician and journalist, passed away in Dublin, aged 91. Years after his election to the D?il (Irish parliament) in 1969, he served as Minister for Posts & Telegraphs in a coalition government and became an outspoken critic of the Provisional IRA. As minister, Cruise-O'Brien implemented the controversial Section 31 measure which banned Sinn FZin from being interviewed on RTf, the national broadcasting service.

Ireland has been stunned by the details of a horrific case of child abuse in which a 40-year-old alcoholic mother-of-six has been jailed for seven years, the maximum penalty available to the judge, for a catalogue of neglect over several years, including forcing her then 13-year-old son to have sex with her. The woman confessed to cops that she was "the worst mother in the world." Health Minister Mary Harney said, "It is probably the most horrific case any of us has ever read about.