THERE are very few endeavours that allow the human spirit to soar like sport does. 

JUST like peace on The Lake Isle of Innisfree, change comes dropping far too slowly in this society — at least for those who do not subscribe to the traditional and rigid conservatism that for decades masked so much inequity, stasis, misogyny, and a publicly trumpeted determination by the most powerful influences to hold the line against the advances of a modernising, Eurocentric democracy.

HARDLY a day passes without Western sensibilities being challenged by barbarisms carried out in the name of extreme and violent Islam. 

VERY few societies were forced to confront their denial about how deeply rooted the evil of child abuse was in their culture as dramatically as this one was. Very few societies were forced to confront their inadequate responses to the legacy of child abuse as dramatically, as painfully — or as shamefully — as this one was.

THE former governor of Mountjoy Prison, John Lonergan, will address Foróige’s conference on volunteering today.

THE terror organisation Islamic State yesterday claimed responsibility for suicide bomb attacks on two mosques in Yemen, killing at least 87 people and wounding 260 more.

JUST as in many other town and city centres across the country the recession has had a dreadful impact on Cork City centre. 

IT must be a wake-up call of sorts when a third of 333 UCC students say they have been the victim of minor sexual assaults. It is certainly a wake-up call of spectacular proportions that 15% say they have been raped or been the victim of another kind of serious sexual assault.

THE qualities, the force of personality, that makes a politician successful and sometimes great, are very often the qualities that eventually destroys them.

AN Irish Examiner investigation today reveals the shocking state of mental health in Ireland, with almost half a million people being prescribed drugs for depression or anxiety.