I have a declaration to make. I once almost accepted a favour from a friend who was also a businessman. Some years ago, having been embroiled for several months in hugely costly family-law proceedings in two jurisdictions, I was staring bankruptcy in the face. For a while it looked as if I might lose my home in Dublin and I was already trying to sell a second property I had purchased for family reasons in London. As the market had slumped since I'd bought this house, it was proving somewhat difficult to shift.

For the last five years, US foreign policy in the Middle East has been the international issue which has garnered the most media attention – with the invasion and occupation of Iraq being the obvious focus for most of the coverage. On Wednesday 12 October, the Lancet published the results of an epidemiological study into excess deaths in Iraq. It examined the death rate, in the periods before and after the invasion, in 1,819 randomly selected households.

The Alice Trilogy

It was one of the flukes of the current political theatre that a meeting with Sinn Féin was the occasion for the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste's first public engagement after what was obviously a difficult tête-à-tête between the two earlier that morning.

At the "America" literary festival in Paris two weeks ago, the attending writers were invited to the US embassy in the heart of the city. The writers had come from all parts of the North American continent. The guests included Margaret Atwood, Chuck Palahniuk, Kent Haruf, Guillermo Arriaga and 75 others, including myself.

Best known for founding Apple Computer, Steve Wozniak's autobiography isn't the most masterful of books but it reflects its author's restless inventiveness, says JD Bierdorfer

Éanna Ní Lamhna explains the mystery of the massive hawk moth

It has emerged that protestors against Shell in Rossport, Co Mayo have been engaged in widespread baby-eating and child murder. One local, who admitted to being too terrified to use his name, spoke of his horrific ordeal when a known protestor (name withheld) turned up at his house and cannibalised his six infant children. He added: "It is known in the area that the IRA is controlling them."

Clonmel has a great history. Bianconi launched the first stagecoach company there. It is the birthplace of Laurence Sterne, the clergyman who became famous as the author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, that grab-bag of whimsy, pseudo-intellectual discourse and ribald humour which turned the 18th-century world on its head.

Ron Rosenbaum is unabashed in
his lust for Shakespeare as he takes
his readers on a journey to discover
what was so Shakespearean about
the great writer. By Walter Kirn