JUST as the details of our ECB bail out — or as it was so very delicately termed, “a facility” — were until recently almost as remote as the details of the third secret of Fatima, the minutae of what is being offered to the people Greece, or what is being rejected by their government, are not entirely clear.

FOR many years Limerick suffered unfairly because of its reputation for violent criminality. It was known as Stab City and no matter how the majority of Limerick people smiled through gritted teeth at the name, it must have hurt. 

MAYBE it’s because we have too easily tolerated light-touch regulation for generations that the litany of negative Hiqa reports on residential homes for those with intellectual disabilities is making such an impact.

THE tens of millions of words, in many, many languages, written about last Friday’s terror attacks in Tunisia, and the millions more yet unpublished, are part of the dividend sought by the murderers.

Another week, another HSE scandal. This week opens with the disclosure that a new respiratory ward specifically to help cystic fibrosis patients at Cork University Hospital, one funded by a charity to the tune of €2.3m, stands idle because the health service does not have the staff to man it.

THE soft-porn novel Fifty Shades of Grey has become a publishing if not a literary sensation of our time.

THE saga around crimes being committed by individuals while free on bail is a long and a sorry one.

THE long, painful process of bringing closure to the trauma around the great wrongs committed on this island continues at its drip-drip, almost glacial pace. 

EVEN at the darkest moments of the terror campaigns that scarred these islands, and there were far too many, the hope that protagonists might come to their senses — as they eventually did — always existed.

TWO of the unfortunate realities of our time came together yesterday when it was announced that two investigations are under way into the death of a young man, who it is suspected, died after he used an illegal slimming product purchased online.