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PRESIDENT MICHAEL D Higgins jetted off from Dublin Airport this morning on an official visit to Rome, where he will spend three days meeting officials and businesspeople and seeing the sites.
This evening the President will deliver a lecture entitled ‘Irish studies and the Significance of Exile and the Migratory Experience’ at the 6th James Joyce Italian Foundation Conference.
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His busy agenda includes a visit to the Pontifical Irish College, the church of San Pietro in Montorio which is the burial place of Hugh O’Neill and Rory O’Donnell and an Irish business networking event.
Tomorrow Higgins will meet with Italian President Napolitano and and will attend a meeting with the Director General of UN Food and Agriculture Organisation on Friday.
The President will return to Dublin at the weekend just in time to attend the Ireland v England Rugby International match in the Aviva Stadium.
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The Carnival is like a photographers dream, the place is absolutely awash with colour. Rio always gets the plaudits but the carnivals in Salvador, Bahia and Florinapolis are just as big and colourful.
The organisers of our St.Patrick’s Day parades would do well to take a look at it and take inspiration. Watching tacky floats with advertisements for butchers and book shops doesn’t hold a match to how they do a parade in Brazil. I’ve nothing against local businesses, I just want to see a good show.
True, but it doesn’t rain in Brazil like it does here. Imagine all that South American finery soaked in cold rain. The colours wouldn’t look so bright on a grey Irish day or a dark misty Irish night. I think we do very well considering our climate.
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