Today is the start of brain awareness week.

In the past 10 years there have been 148 gun murders in this country.

PUBLIC debate has been dominated for quite some time by two issues and there is no indication that the agenda will change anytime soon.

LET us hope that yesterday’s decade-high unemployment figures are not an indication of things to come.

THE final moments of the closing act in a long, detailed and tense trial, especially a murder trial, are usually charged with great tension and emotion.

YESTERDAY’S absolute linkage by the Health Research Board between alcohol and suicide among young people is clear, stark, challenging and, sadly, absolutely unsurprising.

IF ONE of the principle freedoms of our democracy — the right to free speech — can be jeopardised by allowing a discredited, nasty, crank like David Irving telling us that black is white then we need to reconsider the protection that we give to that privilege.

SO, the Fitzgerald report, which looked at the Health Service Executive role in the Portlaoise cancer crises, has found there were serious weaknesses in governing, management and communications.

WE HAVE become so used to public projects running over budget and schedule that mismanagement of public projects has become accepted, almost as if this flagrance was a tacit levy for getting the job done at all.

YESTERDAY we reported that Irish people gambled at least €5 billion last year — that amounts to €14m each and every day of the year.