Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling in favour of the State in the appeal against a landmark decision that a genetic mother of twins born to a surrogate can be registered as their legal mother on their birth certificates will add to myriad complexities over reproductive services facing our besieged Government. 

For nearly a century ceremonies in Britain to remember those who fought in the First World War, and subsequently all wars, were animated by the phrase “Lest We Forget.” 

The publication yesterday of the utterly unambiguous November 2010 letter from the then ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet to then Minister for Finance, the late Brian Lenihan, shows how power is used and how real and pressing vulnerability — a country facing economic collapse and the chaos that would ensue could only be described in those terms — turns national politicians into supplicants rather than negotiators.

The discovery of an effective alternative to antibiotics is very welcome.

A good vocabulary, like good biceps, must be developed.

If anyone was in the slightest doubt how much technology touches all our lives, they only have to look to the success of the annual Web Summit in Dublin.

Amnesty International’s report accuses Israel of war crimes in its 50-day war with Hamas this summer, saying its military showed “callous indifference” to civilian safety when it launched air strikes on multi-storey family homes in Gaza.

The Irish Water nightmare continues for Enda Kenny. 

Despite all of the advances we have made, or imagine we have made, in trying to understand each other, two of this week’s events are chilling reminders of how fate is such a dominant, almost insurmountable, force in young lives and how some individual and social behaviour is utterly incomprehensible.

It is an indication of how provocative and divisive the entire Irish Water/water charges debacle has become that it will continue to dominate public discourse despite yesterday’s European Commission prediction that Ireland is on course to be the fastest growing economy in Europe this year.