A new report says Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamic insurgents have become the world’s deadliest extremist group, edging out the Islamic State group to which it is affiliated.

The costs of failing to defeat Islamic State are rising to intolerable levels, both in lives tragically lost and dollars destroyed. A look at the numbers available suggests that the consequences of not acting outweigh the risks of a full-blown military boots-on-the-ground conflict.

I STILL have the pen I got for speaking at a conference of managers in the public service back in 2009.

IRELAND has dropped in the rankings of the world peace due to our “severe economic and political crises”, according to an annual global peace index carried out by the Institute for Economics and Peace.