TID-BITS

• The Irish Consulate in San Francisco now has its own website at www.consulateofirelandsanfrancisco.org, and a new email address of sanfrancongen@dfa.ie.
• Dublin is one of 22 cities worldwide being considered for inclusion on the new Monopoly World Edition. Fans who visit www.monopoly.com before February 28th can vote for their favorite city.
• Sales of Guinness have risen recently in Ireland and Britain, something that is attributed in part to the December theft of 450 kegs from Dublin's Guinness Brewery. The robbery was reported worldwide and generated an estimated $2.5 million worth of free advertising!
• Brendan Hughes, the man who led the first republican hunger strike in 1980 in the Maze Prison outside Belfast, has died aged 59. He never fully recovered from his 53-day hunger strike, and in recent years had become very critical of Sinn Féin.
• An Irish bank claims that Irish people (IrishRepublic) have a combined worth of almost $1.5 trillion.
• In 2007, for the first time ever, visitor numbers to Ireland surpassed eight million.
• The national airline of the United Arab Emirates, Etihad Airways, is one of the new sponsors of Ireland's hurling championship.
• Aer Lingus, Ireland's National Airline, makes it's announcements in both Irish and English upon landing in Dublin or Shannon, but on its new Belfast routes the airline will in future make its announcements only in English.
• La Nua, the Irish language newspaper, has ceased its print edition but continues to publish on the Internet at www.nuacht.com.
• A man settled a case against an Irish circus for injuries sustained after being headbutted by an elephant.
• A Belfastman used as a driver by Gerry Adams and the Sinn Féin leadership was recently exposed as an informer in the pay of British intelligence.
• The Irish government has set aside $7.3 million for a ''peace monument'' to be erected near the border with Northern Ireland. The monument will be on a scale similar to the statue of Christ the Redeemer above Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
• The Cork county hurling and football players have ended their two-month long "strike" over the recent appointment of a new football manager. Gaelic football and hurling is a completely amateur sport.
• Former Seattle resident Martin Hayes was declared 2007 Traditional Musician of the Year, the most prestigious award of the traditional Irish music world.
• The man carrying a bottle of vodka broke into a minimum security prison in Co. Wicklow recently to visit a friend serving a sentence for armed robbery.
• Cork's Beamish & Crawford, which operates Ireland's oldest brewery, is being bought by Dutch giants Heineken and Carlsberg.
• The US market accounts for approximately 20% of all Jameson Irish whiskey sales.
• A British company has been awarded an Irish government contract to produce a new English-Irish dictionary, beating out an Irish and an Indian company. The new dictionary will take 4-5 years to produce.
• Belfast's News Letter daily newspaper, long identified with the Unionist tradition in Northern Ireland, has resumed coverage of Gaelic games (Hurling and Gaelic Football) after years of ignoring them.
• 84% of Irish citizens believe Ireland's cultural life has been enriched by the influx of immigrants.
• Students at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technolgy who take the honors degree course in physics and instrumentation will receive a $1,500 check from the college's school of science.
• From October, health warnings on cigarette packs in Ireland must be in Irish as well as English
• The GAA is planning a range of activities next year to celebrate the 125th anniversary of its founding in 1884.
• The 11-bedroomed French Ambassador's residence on Dublin's Ailesbury Road is for sale with an asking price of $90 million.

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