Even against the backdrop of US president Donald Trump’s sinister and shockingly inept implosion over events in Charlottesville, the news that people in 22 countries trust Russia’s president Vladimir Putin more than they trust Mr Trump seems to cross a Rubicon most democrats in the West never imagined even existed. 

If longevity and popularity are worth anything at all then Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, which continues at a breakneck pace over this weekend in Ennis, Co Clare, long ago secured its place as a — if not the — defining cultural event in Irish traditional music.

Earlier this week, Britain’s new £3bn (€3.3bn) aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth arrived in Portsmouth amid much fanfare and red-white-and-blue jingoism. The carrier is to be based there for 50 years.

‘UNPRECEDENTED’ is the key word used in the British government’s position paper on the status of Northern Ireland after the UK exits the European Union. It is the same word employed by Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney in his response to the proposals and by the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier.

THE GAA has two red flag issues to deal with. One is, literally, that: the display by Cork hurling fans of Confederate flags at the All-Ireland hurling semi-final between Cork and Waterford at Croke Park on Sunday.

THE death of actor Michael Twomey has robbed the nation of a theatrical legend and his family, friends and fans of one of the funniest, most engaging and talented comics that Ireland has ever produced.

EARLY analysis of Britain’s latest position on Brexit suggests the Tory government is still at the have-their-cake-and-eat-it stage; that they cling to the view they can enjoy the benefits

LAST weekend’s riots in Charlottesville may have been encouraged, if only tacitly, by US president Donald Trump’s earlier ambivalence on the fascism alive in some American hearts, but they were made inevitable by the way our digital world eases communication and connects communities, no matter how hateful, by making geography redundant.

IT might be an exaggeration to say that there is, in one dusty office or another, a report on the failures in our health services for each of the 72,022 fans who saw Waterford beat Cork in Croke Park on Sunday. 

LAST week’s figures, which show that nearly 8,000 citizens of this rich Republic — a third of them children — do not have a home, are as profound a matrix of social and political failure as any civilised, compassionate society should tolerate.