A failing dam has sparked emergency evacuations of two towns in north-west Puerto Rico as the US territory struggled with flooding, an island-wide blackout and other dangers in Hurricane Maria's wake.

COMMON thievery may sometimes have an understandable, or even honourable, motive: necessity, for example the drug addict who needs a fix, the alcoholic a drink or the starving a meal.

IT was naive of your columnist Fergus Finlay to accept the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) as a measure of goodness within any society, and specifically modern Irish society (Irish Examiner, November 14).