His late Dad may have made a peace of sorts with his beloved Catholic Church by admitting to Pope Benedict XVI that "I am not a perfect man," but Sen. Edward Kennedy's youngest son is beating the war drums.

Irish Olympian Martin Fagan has been confirmed as a participant in his year’s 40th running of the ING New York Marathon on November 1. Fagan will continue a long list of elite Irish runners who have competed in the race.

Sen. Ted Kennedy died shortly before midnight Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Mass., at age 77. Kennedy had fought brain cancer, and according to his son had lived longer with the disease than his doctors expected him to.

The second part of our annual summer feature on the questions U.S. naturalization candidates can be asked during a citizenship interview, as provided by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. Here are the last 50, with acceptable answers. For more information on naturalization, visit www.uscis.gov.

The destructive fungal disease – the same one that caused the potato famine in Ireland in the 1840s – that first sprung up in plants in Rhode Island and New York has spread even further in the northeast to Massachusetts farms.

The same virus that caused the potato blight in Ireland in the 1840s that decimated the population and drove thousands to these shores has been found in potato and tomato crops in Rhode Island.

Organizers of the Healthy Kidney 10K road race in Central Park on May 16 have confirmed that Irish Olympian Martin Fagan will be part of the field.

Captain Craig Mullaney knew it was a dangerous mission. He had led his platoon to a section of Afghanistan called Losano Ridge, known to be a haven for

FOLLOWING is our annual two-part summer feature on the questions U.S. naturalization candidates can be asked during a citizenship interview, as provided by the U.

Providence College Professor of English Charles F. Duffy was planning to teach some Irish American fiction in one of his Modern Irish Literature classes. "Figuring Edwin O'Connor would loom large.

Dan Barry loves New York with the same bug-eyed wonder that tourists gaping at the Empire State Building for the first time do. He also knows its back streets and the hardy folk who live and work there like a born and bred local. But the fact is that Barry isn't a local.

LAST month up at the ICONS festival in Boston, I received a copy of the just released DVD Secrets of the Sole: Irish Dance Steps & Stories with Kieran Jordan featuring Kevin Doyle & Aidan Vaughan which I was looking forward to viewing.

Produced by dancer Jordan, a native of Philadelphia who has lived for a long time in Boston since attending Boston College for her undergraduate studies, it takes us inside the world of the solo percussive dance world by profiling two dancers, Doyle and Vaughan, who were formative influences on Jordan and her dancing career.

That career began as a competitive Irish step dancer in Philly who remained interested in Irish dancing in college, taking Irish Studies at BC and eventually modern dance at the University of Limerick's Irish World Music Center where she also was smitten with sean nos (old style) dancing that has became the rage in the trad music scene now in Ireland.

Here are 50 of the questions that U.S. naturalization candidates can be asked during a citizenship interview, as provided by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.

THE bell tolled for John Lennon one awful night outside the Dakota co-op building in New York on December 8, 1980 when Mark Chapman shot him dead. Twenty-eight years later, on a brisk Wednesday morning last week, Senator Hillary Clinton arrived at the Dakota on Central Park West and 72nd Street with her political future on life support.

She had come to New York's fanciest address for two desperately needed fundraisers back to back to keep her campaign breathing through the critical March 4 primaries in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island.

An Irish bar owner in Rhode Island is being sued by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) for violating federal copyrights during a show earlier this year.

ASCAP reports that Patrick's Bar in Providence violated federal copyright law during a live show in 2008 and is seeking up to $17,000 in damages.

ASCAP's complaint states that it made several attempts by mail and other communications over many years to inform Co.

RALPH Cucciniello, the bogus immigration attorney who promised numerous Irish undocumented a green card for an upfront fee of $5,000, pleaded guilty to several counts of larceny, one count of racketeering and three counts of impersonating an attorney in New Haven Superior Court on Thursday, January 24. Cucciniello, who falsely claimed to be an attorney working on a green card program in Yale Law School, pleaded guilty under the Alford doctrine - not admitting guilt but acknowledging that there is sufficient evidence to reach a conviction.Judge Richard Damiani ordered Cucciniello to pay $300,000 to his victims or face additional prison time.

PRESIDENT George W. Bush has invited First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness back to the White House before he leaves office next year.The outgoing president made the unexpected invitation to the Sinn Fein and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leaders during his final visit to Northern Ireland on Monday.

The bogus immigration lawyer who scammed numerous Irish undocumented out of hundreds of thousands of dollars will serve 20 years in prison, a judge determined in a Connecticut court recently.

Ralph Cucciniello, 56, over the course of a year and a half conned more than 60 immigrants from nine countries, although most of them were Irish, into believing he was a respectable lawyer running an immigration clinic at the Yale Law School.

Cucciniello, who is being held in MacDougal-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, Connecticut, was charged with one count of racketeering, two counts of larceny in the first degree (over $10,000), 56 counts of larceny in the second degree ($5,000 or more) and 56 counts of fraudulently impersonating an attorney.

Irish Eye on Hollywood

Liam Cunningham is an Irish actor to look out for as fall approaches. He has built up an impressive resume of Irish and British movies, including Ken Loach's provocative Irish Civil War Epic The Wind that Shakes the Barley as well as Breakfast on Pluto, in which Cunningham co-starred with fellow Irish actor Cillian Murphy. Cunningham's most recent appearance was in the summer horror movie The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor starring Brendan Fraser.

The name Doyle is found in older annals as O Dubhgaill but is almost never found in this form in modern times. Although the Doyle name is fairly common in Ireland, the origin of the name is not clear. It is generally believed to be derived from the Gaelic "Dubh Gall," meaning "dark foreigner."

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

I am a musician, a published BMI songwriter and a small business owner like Patrick Griffin in Rhode Island, who you reported was being sued by the American Society of Composers in your last issue ("Bar Owner Sued Over Songs.") I am sure Mr. Griffin is a nice guy, but he does not want to take responsibility for his actions.