This just had to be seen to be believed, as the Moulin Rouge in Paris hosted a Can Can dancer like none ever seen before - an Irish fan.

French midfielder Lassana Diarra has issued a threat against Irish player Keith Andrews who has accused Diarra of refusing to shake hands with him and calling him "An Irish pr*** at the end of their World Cup game in Dublin.

Dublin meets Paris in this amazingly tasty winter treat. If you have the time and the opportunity, try to get hold of as many different types of onion as you can for this soup, you’ll need about two pounds in total. Sweat them gently and you’ll be amazed at all the flavors going on. This recipe rewards effort!

Hollywood starlet Lindsay Lohan has revealed that she used supermodel Kate Moss as a human shield at the French fashion collections. Lohan was swarmed by reporters and paparazzi during her debut as artistic advisor for Emanuel Ungaro.

Lindsay Lohan's debut in Paris as the artistic advisor for the Emanuel Ungaro fashion house was slammed by fashion critics across the board. Now the 23-year-old sometime-actress is speaking out in an attempt to save face.

Desperate tweets and out of control partying have aroused concern for Lindsay Lohan's well-being.

Lindsay Lohan can't seem to get on-again off-again girlfriend Samantha Ronson out of her mind, or so her latest tweets would suggest.

It's not official YET! But it looks as if our earlier story that U2 will wrap up their mega 360°Tour with in Ireland has been confirmed.

Firstwivesworld.com, a community for divorced women, has named the world’s best celebrity stepfathers, and none other than Irishman Pierce Brosnan tops the list.

Oh La La! Lindsay Lohan's debut in Paris as the artistic advisor for the stately

The trailer for “Form Paris with Love,” an action thriller starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and John Travolta has been released.

So the feuding brothers in Oasis, Liam and Noel Gallagher have finally called it quits. Noel Gallagher says he can't go on with brother Liam.

A prominent Irish priest has called on the Catholic Church to halt recruitment of new priests until they properly address Ireland’s clerical child abuse controversy.

Did you know "Ulysses," the literary masterpiece by James Joyce, might never have appeared on American bookshelves. The court case to get the book published in the U.S. involved one passionate Irishman, challenged the censorship of perhaps the greatest novel ever written, and changed the way Americans read.

There aren't too many Irish World War II heroes. But in December, a new video game is going to rewrite history.

News bits from around the 32 counties in Ireland.

A sense of normalcy seems to have re-appeared in the troubled life of Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who was arrested at Charles DeGaulle Airport in Paris last month after a drunken tirade at an airport bar saw him slug a waiter and allegedly threaten other staffers with death.

There’s a real benefit to George Lee’s recent elevation to savior of the nation as one of the newest members of the Dail (Parliament) -- we no longer have to listen to his moans and groans on our national radio station.

The heartbroken family of Dr Jane Deasy have been told that the young doctor's body has been recovered from the wreckage of the Air France plane which crashed in the Atlantic last month.

Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Myers seems to have been living up to his reputation as a hard-living fist-throwing thespian as reports seep out of France that "The Tudors" star was involved in an incident with les gendarmes at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris

In an exclusive interview with the Niall O'Dowd, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg talks about his hopes for a third term, his support for Irish issues and how to fix the economy here and in Ireland.

With video: In news that may come as a shock to few, but not to anyone who has given the matter any serious thought, the Blarney Stone in County Cork has been named the world’s germiest tourist attraction.

The Lynch family is derived from several independent clans. One of these is the Norman family De Lench who came to Ireland in the 12th century and were the most prominent of the "Tribes of Galway". These were the 14 Norman families who controlled this important medieval trading city and made it one of the few outposts in the West of Ireland that was loyal to the British crown.

PRESIDENT Mary McAleese and Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen led a string of tributes to the memory of the three young doctors, all friends and one a former Riverdance star, who are missing feared dead in the Air France trans-Atlantic disaster. McAleese said, “My thoughts and prayers, and the thoughts of everyone, are with the Irish families and the families of everyone on board at this very difficult time.”

The families of the three Irish women lost on Air France Flight 447 face an agonizing wait to see if their bodies will ever be found. Riverdance star Dr. Eithne Walls and her friends Dr Jane Deasy and Dr Aisling Butler were all onboard the ill-fated Airbus A330 flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The Brazilian Air Force has found debris from the flight scattered across the Atlantic Ocean where the plane is believed to have gone down. However, investigators say it is extremely unlikely that they will be ever able to find human remains.

Three Irish people were on board the Air France plane which disappeared over the Atlantic overnight. The plane is feared to have crashed in the Atlantic with 228 people aboard after losing power in a massive thunderstorm high above the ocean. The flight left Rio de Janiero at 5pm EST yesterday and was due to arrive into Paris at 4.15am EST.

This month, in an exhibition that seems calculated to attract every Oscar Wilde enthusiast in America, the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan will exhibit a selection of the Irish writer’s most important manuscripts and letters. But this isn’t just another stuffy museum piece featuring a more than usually compelling Irish writer. This time the Morgan can boast of a dramatic first: the whereabouts of this beautifully bound collection was unknown to scholars for over half a century.

With the recent publication of the first volume of Beckett’s letters I started to recall the last time I met Beckett in Paris in 1988. We first met in April, 1985. It had been three years since our meeting at the café in the Hotel PLM. At noon. Noon being the time he had suggested. The suggested hour.

Cork-born chef Stephen Hartigan is an A-list chef in New York who cooks for stars and socialites alike. The in-house cook for one of the city’s most prominent couples talks to APRIL DREW about his career path, and his new book.

Irish actor and “In Treatment” star Gabriel Byrne has revealed was physically abused by Catholic priests as a child, but he doesn’t blame them – he blames their celibacy.

Ireland might be in the throes of its worst ever financial crisis, but at least Dublin is still a pretty good place to live, a new survey says

O’Connell Street’s Spire tops the list of must-see sites in Dublin, in a new study of photos posted on the Web site Flickr.

The names O'Byrne and O'Beirne (or Byrne and Beirne), often regarded as variants of the same root, are, in fact, totally different. O'Byrne is derived from the Gaelic O'Broin meaning "descended from Bran", the 11th century King of Leinster. The O'Byrnes were chieftains of what is now County Kildare until the Norman invasion when they were driven from their lands into the mountains of County Wicklow.

Ireland's economy might be in the doldrums but tourists still love to go there, the results of a new survey show

“Closing Time” is the bittersweet title of noted satirist writer Joe Queenan’s remarkable account of growing up penniless and Irish American in the Philadelphia projects, in daily fear of his abusive alcoholic father. He talks about his new memoir and the 17-year reign of terror that was his childhood.

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

 A new survey form Hotel.Com has found that the price of a hotel room in Ireland went down by 17 percent last year. According to the Web site’s hotel price index, which surveys hotel prices in major destinations across the world, the average cost of an Irish hotel room in the final quarter of last year was

AC Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti has revealed that he had a meeting with Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich.

When I first came to America three years ago, I wasn't impressed. Everything seemed familiar from the movies, and nothing was beautiful in the European sense that I had become accustomed to. I had a fun vacation traveling around with my friend, from New York to Miami to San Diego to Chicago, but decided I'd never waste spare holidays by coming here again.

Once banned by the church because it was seen as sinful, Irish dance has since flourished not only in countries with a large population of Irish immigrants like Scotland, England and America, but also in places like South Africa, New Zealand, Canada and even Russia.

A round up of recently published Irish--themed books

Des Kenny's family has run bookshops in Galway since 1940, and like his parents before him he's been a bookseller all his working life. Educated in his native city and also at the Sorbonne in Paris, Kenny recently hit on the fascinating idea of releasing a list of 101 Irish authors who, in his own words, demand to be read. This is a democratic selection, well in keeping with the philosophy of his famous shop, and there is obvious joy in the making of it.

Irish writer Anne Enright goes globetrotting in the 19th Century-set "The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch." Though a slim novel, Enright packs lots of passion and politics into this novel based on an Irish woman who has been described as Paraguay's Eva Peron. Eliza is beautiful and adventurous, and meets an ambitious South American lover in Paris.

"Roscoe," the latest book from Albany author William Kennedy, is a splendid novel: at once an exuberant elegy, a sad comedy, a realistic fable of life and death. In the seventh novel of Kennedy's Albany cycle, the meshed subjects are the stuff of the real world, from politics to love, corruption to honor. But there is also room for a ghost story (the epitome of an unburied past), several murders, suggestions of incest, much gaudy corruption, and the distinction between sin and vice.

The Irish literary world suffered a terrible loss in late March when celebrated novelist and short story writer John McGahern - easily one of the 20th Century's greatest Irish writers - died of cancer at the age of 71. In a twist not unlike those which dotted his fictional explorations of rural Irish life, McGahern's own life story "All Will Be Well" was published here in the U.S.

Every year since 1901, the international Nobel Prize has been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace. There is an elite group of Irish and Northern Irish scholars and activists who have won this prestigious award.

DUBLIN-born mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon, or Pat as she's known to her close friends, is currently making her New York debut at Metropolitan Opera in Handel's masterpiece Giulio Cesare, came to prominence as a singer at an early age. Quickly establishing herself as a versatile operatic performer, her repertoire has won her lead roles at the grand opera houses of Paris, London, New York, Rome and elsewhere.

For Bardon, the first steps to a lifelong career in the arts were taken early on.

SHE keeps saying she's going to retire from live performing, but when you can fetch almost $1,000 for a single ticket who'd really want to give that up?

Certainly not Barbra Streisand, who's hitting the road yet again this summer, and Ireland is one of five European cities she'll be visiting in June/July. Babs will perform her first ever live Irish concert on Saturday, July 14 at Castletown House in Co. Kildare, but admission won't come cheap.

NEW York-based Irish playwright and film director Imelda O'Reilly has just been awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to travel to Morocco to make a new film.

O'Reilly, a native of Maddenstown, Co. Kildare is currently attending Columbia University where she is a masters of fine arts candidate in film.

IS it me or is time flying by way too fast? There is news this week that a number of U.K.-based Irish artists are being honored for their accomplishments.