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August / September 2016

A Reflection on Simplicity

The Irish-born biologist and parasitologist William Cecil Campbell, who was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine, talks to Patricia Harty. ℘℘℘ For those of us fortunate enough to turn a...

The 2016 Irish America Healthcare and Life Sciences 50 list celebrates Irish innovators who are leading the way in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. The work of these Irish-American...

When I was a kid my father would take us for drives to County Clare, or as he called it, “Biddy Early country.” We’d drive the back road, so narrow that the trees on either side reached across...

Irish universities are leading the way in breakthrough medical science. ℘℘℘ Testing Breakthroughs at QUB Queen’s University Belfast is leading the world’s first ever trial of a new...

Recent figures from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, Ireland’s specialist agency for the surveillance of communicable diseases, show a 30 percent increase in HIV cases in Ireland. To...

A groundbreaking new melanoma treatment is being rolled out to patients in the U.K., but may never reach those in Ireland. The National Pharmacoeconomics Centre (NCPE), an independent medicine cost...

Dr. Patrick Kelly (pictured above with Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of the Lumina Foundation) received an Alumni Honors Award from University College Dublin in June for his services to...

Ireland’s first undersea observatory was launched in June as part of an event for the Digital Ocean, a data resource of the Irish Marine Institute. The Digital Ocean represents Ireland’s...

As of June 17th, Ireland has officially been connected to the internet for 25 years. On the same day in 1991, Trinity College Dublin became the first organization in the country to connect to the...

Ireland’s current agricultural practices are unsustainable, say N.G.O. coalitions Stop Climate Chaos and the Environmental Pillar in their new report, “Not So Green: Debunking the Myths Around...

Ireland’s shrinking bee population is receiving a helping hand from the National Biodiversity Plan, an initiative designed to protect the pollination stations that keep the insects fed. Of the 98...

The first ever All-Ireland sand sculpting competition will take place in August at the 30th annual Duncannon Sand Sculpting Festival on Duncannon Beach, Co. Wexford. Featuring both professional and...

Rory McIlroy, who was chosen to represent Ireland in Brazil’s 2016 Olympic games, announced in July that he would not be competing. The Northern Irish golfer issued an official statement,...

Fans of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland soccer teams were commended by the City of Paris for their displays of good sportsmanship during the 2016 Union of European Football Associations...

Explorer and historian Tim Severin celebrated 40 years since he embarked on an epic 4,500 mile voyage across the Atlantic on a leather boat with Shannon Heritage in June at the permanent home of...

In June, the United Kingdom officially passed the referendum to end its membership with the European Union. A slim 51.9 percent majority voted in accordance with the “Leave” campaign, while 49.1...

For two decades now, playwright Martin McDonagh has been dazzling theater and movie audiences with Irish plays like The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Cripple of Inishmaan. More recently, he has...

Martin Scorsese’s next foray into ethnic warfare is quite simple, at least to judge from its title. Slated to star Robert DeNiro as well as Al Pacino, the film is called The Irishman. The film is...

The 28th annual Galway Film Fleadh, held in July, featured a diverse array of Irish films that should be trickling to American screens in the coming months. One of the most highly-anticipated...

First there was 2013’s Saving Mr. Banks, starring Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell, and Emma Thompson. The film explored the artistic struggle between a children’s writer and movie makers while creating...

“I know it’s just my Irish resentment, but I don’t like being looked down on.” That’s a line from American Pastoral, the great 1997 novel by Philip Roth, which will be turned into a...

If it worked for Liam Neeson, maybe it can work for Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan is working with fellow Irishman, Dundalk-born director John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, A Good Day to Die Hard), on the...

Another impressive Irish team is being assembled for Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan’s next film. Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy and Dublin up-and-coming star Barry Keoghan (’71, Life’s...

Art, literature, politics and history come together once again this September at the Kennedy Summer School in New Ross, Wexford. American and Irish academics, writers and policy experts will converge...

Mary Holt Moore – a prominent leader in New York’s Irish American community and only the second woman to lead the St. Patrick’s Day parade down Fifth Avenue – died in July at the age of...

When the fantasy film A Monster Calls (with Liam Neeson in a voice role) opens in October, it will present an opportunity for moviegoers to not only get lost for a few hours in a magical world, but...

It worked for Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton may have had this in mind when she selected an Irish Catholic senator – which is also current vice president Joe Biden’s background – to be her...

Donald Trump and Mike Pence have more in common than a desire to win election to the White House in November. Pence, the governor of Indiana, has strong Irish roots. His grandmother came to the U.S....

Back in July, on a hot afternoon at Kennedy International Airport in Queens, a truck carried a 40,000-pound piece of debris – draped in an American flag – out of a building known as Hangar 17....

Irish woman Nikki Bradley, a courageous survivor of a rare form of bone cancer known as Ewing’s sarcoma, has just defied the odds once again after climbing an Icelandic glacier on crutches. Since...

An Irish American New York University student made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery in July when she spotted what turned out to be a 12th century kite brooch (pictured right) in the sand on Omey...

Irish American placekicker Patrick Murray has been signed by the Cleveland Browns for the coming football season. After playing for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers since graduating Fordham University in...

The personal effects of organized crime-boss James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger, Jr. were offered up for auction by the U.S. Marshals in June. A total of 104 items were seized during Bulger’s arrest...

Galway native Billy Lawless, Sr., who has lived in Chicago since 1998, has been appointed to the Irish Seanad (the Irish senate) by Taoiseach Enda Kenny. His nomination marks the first time an...

Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Ireland in June for a six-day trip through counties Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Mayo. Arriving with his brother, sister, daughter, and five grandchildren, Biden was...

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts presented its annual Gold Medal in the Arts to five formidable names linked with the Irish arts community in June. In a gala ceremony held at Farmleigh in...

One of the country’s top transplant researchers is Dr. Barbara Murphy, the Dublin-born chair of medicine at Mount Sinai Health System in New York. Her expertise in the field of renal transplants...

ABC’s John Donvan captures the challenges, activism and inspiration of living with autism. ℘℘℘ Robert Foster Kennedy was born in Belfast, where he studied to become a doctor at Queens...

There’s no way for John Donvan to put it gently when it comes to Ruth Sullivan, an Irish Catholic mother of seven and pioneering woman in the world of autism. “She just thought it was all...

Mountaineer Colin O’Brady talks breaking two world records, keeping children active, and shows just how far the human body can be tested. ℘℘℘ On May 27th, Colin O’Brady was one of two...

One family’s journey from addiction to recovery. ℘℘℘ Casey Duffy will not be mistaken for anything but Irish – the lightly graying hair is clearly that characteristic red, and he has the...

Five Things You Didn’t Know About Melissa McCarthy’s Family Tree. ℘℘℘ Easily one of the most popular and reliable box office performers today, actress, comedian, producer, and now fashion...

Healer, Herbalist, Clairvoyant… or Witch? Biddy Early was a true “alpha female” writes Rosemary Rogers in her latest exploration of “Wild Irish Women.” ℘℘℘ For as long as anyone...

Billy McComiskey, who recently received a National Heritage Fellowship – the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts, talks to Kristin Cotter McGowan. ℘℘℘ I’m up in...

Raised in London with Irish and Scottish roots, Emily O’Hare made a name for herself as a wine buyer and head sommelier at The River Café, London. That was before she fell in love with Italy and...

Reek Sunday, the last Sunday in July, when pilgrims climb Ireland’s holiest mountain, Croagh Patrick went ahead with far few climbers this year. Fr. Charlie McDonnell, parish priest of...

The story behind the Georgian houses in Dublin City and why no two adjacent doors are alike. ℘℘℘ Mention the word “doors” to someone of the Boomer Generation (me, for instance) and the...

Five years ago this summer, a dream came true – but not quite the way the daydreamer envisioned it might. A decade earlier, I approached the poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, proposing a...

Books of Irish and Irish American interest. ℘℘℘ FICTION Pond By Claire-Louise Bennett English writer Claire-Louise Bennett’s debut novel Pond is a through-the-looking-glass experience of the...

Leland Bardwell 1922 – 2016 Leland Bardwell, an Irish poet and novelist, died in June at the age of 94. She had a prolific literary career that spanned over five decades. Bardwell’s first...

So many cops are married to nurses,” the great novelist and screenwriter Richard Price once observed. “It’s just the way it is. You know, mom’s a nurse, dad’s a cop…. That’s...

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August / September 2016

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