My final Western People article of 2024 was not in keeping with the spirit of ‘Happy Christmas’ or indeed a ‘Happy New Year’, but one I felt compelled to write as a social historian, but also a proud native of this part of Ireland.

There have been times in my life when I have seriously doubted my own sanity, wondering why I chose to do the most stupid thing when the easier path was clearly better and way more sensible.

The assassination of Brian Thompson, the powerful CEO of UnitedHealthcare, has shocked corporate America.

Art O’Leary, the chief executive of the Electoral Commission, has just publicly admitted that the Irish electoral register could be inflated by as much as 500,000 names through duplication or through not removing people who have died.

Looking forward to the impending general election of 1918, the November 16th edition of the Connaught Telegraph delivered a sharp burn of the Sinn Féin candidate for North Mayo, Dr John Crowley, stating ‘from what we know of North Mayo, Dr Crowley ...

Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone had the numerical superiority, with the English army pinned between his Gaelic forces and their besieged Spanish allies in Kinsale town.

With America’s Rubicon election fast approaching on Tuesday next, November 5th, Donald Trump’s supporters seem increasingly confident of victory (at least publicly), while left-leaning commentators are sounding the alarm about troubling poll shifts ...

Donald Trump’s face is set in concentration, wading through almost hip-high floodwaters on some overcast, unknown street. He appears to be listening to his companion, likely discussing the extent of the inundation.

‘You could fry an egg on the sidewalk here… if it wasn’t already boiled in your pocket!” As I self-congratulated myself on my wit, an actor colleague from South Korea looked at me with a mixture of incomprehension and pity.

One of these candidates is much slicker than the other, is a much more practiced, kinda professional, debate-style speaker - and the other candidate won.

She was polite but purposeful. "I’m sorry to interrupt, but I overheard you say something about the Green Party in Ireland?"Her half-smile didn’t reach her eyes, and she leaned in almost anxiously, studying me.

It was one of those miserable post-Christmas weeks in Kerry a few years back when a local correspondent in The Kerryman summed up the news succinctly as: “No news this week”.

Vice-presidential nominees have “virtually no impact”, according to Donald Trump, when recently asked if JD Vance would be ready to take over "on day one if he has to be".

As the warm Californian evening falls, the latest news beams out from large flatscreen TVs across the stacked rows of apartments visible from our living room window.