Viewers of TnaG may switch to bearla for babewatch news. In Olivia O'Leary's day, they were called presenters, but the Connacht Tribune unflinchingly describes the latest talent, Grainne Seoighe (24), the TnaG broadcaster "snapped up" by TV3 to be its evening news anchorwoman, as a "babe". What next, anchor "hunks"?
Aspirant hunks tried to make sex symbols of themselves in Galway city and failed miserably. Two Dublin men who dropped their trousers before a group of women were quickly arrested. "We have heard of the Mexican wave but now we have the Galway Glare," said District Justice John Garavan. The young men were from "opulent addresses" in Killiney, Co Dublin, said the judge, fining them £200 each. A third man, a 19-year-old from Loughlinstown, was fined only £100 because although drunk he hadn't time to drop his pants before gardai arrived.
Judge Garavan imposed a £500 fine on an 18-year-old Dungannon man who ran naked around Eyre Square for a dare. "I hope he wasn't doing a lap of honour," the judge said. The arresting garda said "he had never seen the likes of it before", prompting Judge Garavan to suggest electric prods might be appropriate items for gardai at such times.
And they used to say the Irish were a holy people - maybe too holy. "As Kerry parishes continue to lose `priest power', Bishop Bill Murphy has declared that there may have been too many priests, too Many masses and too many churches in the past," says the Kerryman.
Four parishes lost a curate in July and almost two-thirds in the Kerry diocese are served by one priest, whereas 30 years ago, fewer than one in five parishes had one priest.
At Killanena Church in Co Clare, "shocked, angry and resentful" parishioners confronted Bishop Willie Walsh during a two-hour "showdown" prompted by news that their serving parish priest would not be replaced, the Clare Champion reported.
The Mayo News believes tourism's "phenomenal growth" may be getting out of hand. "A country which stands to have twice as many visitors as natives is running the risk of losing what makes the product so special in the first place. Tourists do not visit Ireland to see a country swamped with fellow-tourists - and where contact with native people and customs becomes impossible," it said.
The Longford Leader asked "how tolerant are we of others?" It was commenting on the experience of a 17-year-old Anglo-Indian girl visiting her Irish grandmother and other relatives on holiday, as she has done every year since she was nine. A man shouted at the girl in a pub and reportedly said: "Go away! We don't want you in our country!"
Such intolerance "is something which most people in the Longford area can easily associate with", said the newspaper. "It also displays latent levels of intolerance which are worrying.
"We in the Republic are always very quick to condemn bigotry and sectarianism in the Six Counties and we are known to mount our high horses and preach to the Northern people about the merits of tolerance and understanding," said the Leader.
When a Catholic woman married a Free Presbyterian in Irvinestown, Co Fermanagh, there was "absolute madness", said the Impartial Reporter. The bride's father fell face first into the cake, relatives engaged in an unseemly shouting match, the telegrams would have "made your hair stand on end" and the groom disappeared, but not before "Rev Ian Paisley", direct from Drumcree, had it out with his old adversary, "The Pope", who blessed the groom and welcomed him in to the Catholic Church.
The "spoof" wedding was part of the Lady of the Lake Festival. Jimmy Dundas, festival organiser said: "There's not another town in Northern Ireland has the sense of humour to be able to have a good laugh at ourselves. I've never had a night's craic like it, maybe the rest of the country could learn something from the way we get on down here." Elsewhere in the Impartial Reporter, an Enniskillen police officer, Chief Insp John Barr, told of how "the crowd cheered as he fell bleeding to the ground" when he was injured by a bomb blast during rioting at Drumcree.
The Andersonstown News said the Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Patrick Walsh, "got it right" when he described as "barbaric" the killing of Andrew Kearney as a result of knee-capping. "It is a strange kind of ceasefire in which bullets are aimed not at heads but at knees," it said.