The politeness is overwhelming. Nothing prepares you for the impeccable good manners of the Japanese. And it’s not some paddywhackery aimed at extracting the last yen from a visitor to the country. You only need to look at how they interact with each to realise this is a society unlike any other.

THE 53rd Corona Cork Film Festival opened yesterday with the screening of Burn After Reading, the latest Coen brothers film starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney.

THE call by the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr RK Pachauri, for a reduction in the global consumption of meat signals the final nail in the coffin of scientific reality at the UN.