IT was impossible to watch the tsunami sweep through Japan’s costal cities and towns yesterday without being deeply moved by the plight of the hundreds of thousands of people caught in its path.

THE appointment of the cabinet and 15 ministers of State highlighted once again how very few of our top-flight political positions are filled by women.

EVEN among the long, sad litany of betrayals thrown up by World War II, the calculated abandonment of the Polish resistance after they began the Warsaw uprising in August 1944 stands out.

IT is unavoidable but frustrating that the debate about the new national children’s hospital be re-opened.

ACKNOWLEDGING the vote that made him our 13th Taoiseach — only the second from west of the Shannon — just before two o’clock yesterday afternoon Enda Kenny immediately focussed on two qualities that will be essential if we are to rebuild our economy, our politics and our faith in official Ireland.

YOU’D need to be living on Mars not to know smoking is bad for you, so bad it kills millions of people addicted to tobacco in one form or another.

ANYONE lucky enough to have seen how powerful a force for good the simple idea of a community garden can be while on a visit to many of the world’s great and diverse cities — London, Havana, Seattle, Yokohama, Bogota or Copenhagen say — won’t be hard to convince that those projects can have hugely positive benefits on so many levels.

POLITICS they say is the art of compromise.