THERE are anxious times ahead for thousands of hip replacement patients in Ireland as they await tests to see if they have been implanted with faulty components.

INFORMED consent is a fine concept but when it comes to drug trials the decision to participate may be informed a little too much by financial hardship.

There was no psychiatric expert available to the gardaí to advise on the best way to deal with a psychiatrically ill man when they were confronted by John Carthy, an armed manic-depressive, at Abbeylara in April 2000. They ended up shooting him dead.

Despite the downgrading of this country’s credit rating by Standard and Poor’s this week, the National Treasury Management Agency borrowed another €600 million by selling Treasury Bills at an interest rate that was close on 0.5% lower than the rate at which it borrowed a couple of weeks earlier.

The road crash near Killarney yesterday in which four young people lost their lives and another was seriously injured is probably the nightmare of the parents of all adolescents. It is another human tragedy that resonates with all parents.

The old story of the varying costs of school uniforms becomes the focus of controversy at this time every year.

The Claudy bombings of July 31, 1972, in which nine innocent people – five Catholics and four Protestants – were killed in Co Derry are now history, but they have an immediacy with the publication yesterday of the report of the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman, Al Hutchinson.

With the beginning of the new school year, the Road Safety Authority has called on parents and teachers to highlight the importance of road safety among children, especially those starting school for the first time. Some 80,000 high visibility vests are being distributed to schools for children to wear.

The Irish Examiner begins the first day of a two-part investigation today in relation to the cutback in services for “our most vulnerable”.

The Rose of Tralee returned to our television screens last night with a new compere, Dáithi O Sé, the tenth host since the competition began 51 years ago.