Teenage rebels ain't what they used to be. By applying a victim template to the recent fuss about the boys barred from sitting their Junior Cert because their hair was too short, the media undermined both authority and rebellion – the latter because it is impossible to be at once a rebel and a victim. The treatment of the story was a reversal of what might have been expected a generation ago, when, if they had become involved at all, the media would have sided with the Tullamore headmaster.

A friend, a Clareman and a New York-based professor, tells the following story: just two weeks ago he arrived in Florence in charge of a number of American college students on an extended academic lark. The professor is in his mid-30s, tall, shy, smart, charming, the sort of man who has his finger on the pulse of what's going on around him. But he also happens to be a tad absent-minded, not the sort who has yet bowed down to the intricacies of bureaucracy. Scattered, or jetlagged, or both, he had to visit the local Italian labour authorities in order to register.

Farmers' markets boost local economies, help the environment, remove the need for excessive packaging – and most of all, the food tastes better

Housing, and specifically measures to boost the provision of social housing, has been a key factor in the final stages of putting a new national partnership agreement together. The spiralling cost of housing has put house ownership out of the reach of thousands of people on average wages, leaving such people at the mercy of greed-inspired private landlord renters or waiting hopelessly on a growing local authority housing list.

Google are gearing up to get inside inside your livingroom. In a research paper, two Google researchers, Michele Covell and Shumeet Baluja, propose using ambient-audio identification technology, via your computer, to watch television with you and deliver personalised internet content at the same time.

The World Association of Newspapers held its annual conference in Moscow last week, during which Gavin O'Reilly was re-elected president. O'Reilly's re-election and his opening speech were covered by several of the papers within the Independent News and Media (INM) group – of which he is chief operating officer. His speech concentrated on criticising the excessive state control of the media in Russia.

Colin Murphy braves the tour groups and summer heat for the kind of unthreatening production the Gate do best

The BBC's Panorama exposé on FIFA made the dodgy dealings of Irish councillors in the 1980s look tame in comparison, writes Dermot Bolger

The Carlton site has been derelict for 27 years. In part because Dublin City Council inexplicably issued a compulsory purchase order on the site and then sought to deliver the site into the hands of a favoured developer. By Frank Connolly

The wild Irish salmon season is upon us. Darina Allen advises on how to recognise the best fish, and what to do when we get them home