Twenty years late and not yet complete, the International Space Station finally took shape last month, writes Leo Enright.

A new book of George Bernard Shaw's letters to The Times compiled by Ronald Ford provides a fascinating insight into the wit and  genius of a novelist, playwright and prolific letter writer, who witnessed much in his lifetime.

The return of Bacon, Higgins and Bayley

Perhaps people are taking the rise in popularity of role playing games too seriously. The US Department of Defence is developing a synthetic parallel world, complete with billions of “nodes” to represent the world population, in an attempt to foresee the effects of various events, such as how long a country can go without water or the results of televised propaganda. The concept would be to create “a synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information” according to Professor Alok Chaturvedi.

Hamas has won a military victory in Gaza at the cost of exposing its political weakness.

There must be a full official investigation into the origin of all the training courses attended by members of the Limerick City Council in view of the latest scandal, a spokesman for Republican Sinn Fein said today when a picket was placed on the council meeting.

The recent re-jailing of the Israeli Mordechai Vanunu for supposedly talking to people he should not talk to (the Nazis were not this bad) must be condemned by all right-thinking people.

Past: 

At the turn of the century the Jewish Israelites dug trenches through Rath of the Synods and the entrance to the banqueting hall in search of the Ark of the Covenant.

There have been many, many fine words in the printed press over the last few days on the departure of Tony Blair.

In the last couple of weeks, Ireland's two self-styled print media enfants terribles, John Waters and Kevin Myers, have both had a run-in with the Irish wagon of Christopher Hitchens' publicity train for his new book, God is Not Great.  Waters was duped into taking the role of Hitchens' floor wipe at the Gate Theatre on 17 June in a public debate on the merits of religion (Waters being in favour of God and Hitchens against) and Myers imposed on Indo readers two extraordinarily pretentious articles about evolution, Hitchens and faith, apparently arising out of a stroll he took wit