Summary
DUBLIN - He downed a pint of Guinness with a distant cousin and checked out centuries-old parish records tracing his family to Ireland. From the tiny village of Moneygall to a huge, cheering crowd in Dublin, President Barack Obama opened his four-nation trip through Europe on Monday with an unlikely homecoming far removed from the grinding politics of Washington and the world.
"My name is Barack Obama, of the Moneygall Obamas, and I've come home to find the apostrophe we lost somewhere along the way," a clearly tickled Obama - make that O'Bama - told the overflow throng at Dublin's College Green with his wife, Michelle, right by him. "We feel very much at home."See the full content of this document
Extract
Obama Visits His Irish Roots: Europe
Obama's feel-good indulgence in Ireland came at the start of a four-country, six-day trip that is bound to get into stickier matters as he goes. The only hitch on day one was the threat of a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland that led the president to leave Ireland without even a night's stay, as he planned to move on to England on Monday night.
A high point was a helicopter jaunt to Moneygall, population of about 350, where the president's great-great-great-grandfather, Falmouth Kearney, was born and where thousands congregated to welcome the United States' first bla...See the full content of this document
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