It's that time of year again, the one euphemistically known as "the marching season". The season of mayhem, provocation and triumphalism all wrapped up in an archaic orange sash. Festivities kicked off prematurely as always with the now "traditional" burning of a Catholic Church. This time it was Portadown's turn and some "cultural" exchanges with Catholic kids on a North Belfast housing estate that culminated in arson attacks on their homes.
At a time when our health services are lurching from one crisis to another, what possible explanation can there be for Mary Harney to gift a British company 16 million out of that service? Because that is exactly what her decision not to invoke risk equalisation in the health insurance business does.
The Dáil has broken up for the summer recess, but Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney, certainly made sure that it went out on a bang with her bombshell announcement that she did not intend to ensure risk equalisation in the health insurance business for the time being.
The Israeli military court has found a former soldier in the Israeli Defence Forces guilty of the manslaughter of Thomas Hurndall, a photography student and International Solidarity Movement activist who was shot in the head in the Gaza Strip two years ago. It turns out the soldier was a Bedouin and even I am thinking, well that wasn't as hard for them as it might have been if it was really one of their own. How we have learned to second-guess everything.
With people complaining about the lack of African acts involved and exaggerated viewership being touted about Live 8 is not welcome by all.
Big Brother contestants feel destined for even bigger things. But there is no such thing as easy money, says Dermot Bolger
Some time in 1985 or 1986 I was editor and chief executive of the Sunday Tribune. The newspaper had gone through difficult times and a substantial debt was owed to the Revenue Commissioners. We managed to raise additional finance but needed the agreement of the Revenue Commissioners to phase in payments to them. Although we had made such arrangements previously with the Revenue Commissioners and had adhered to them, on this occasion we could not even get a meeting with them.
Meejit looks at the media's treatment of the Live 8 spectacle.
I am trying to learn how to avoid unnecessary situations that raise my blood pressure above comfortable levels. Not an easy thing to do when there is so much pulse-racing material hitting you from every angle – corrupt and possibly criminal gardaí, Portmarnock patriarchs who have shown that their bad taste in sportswear is only matched by their prehistoric and unpalatable attitudes to female golfers, and egos the size of Mars trajecting towards full-on collision in the Dáil.
The first two programmes: Director Niamh Sammon televisually brilliant, great archive footage, journalistically second rate, blather, misinformation, missed opportunity. RTÉ is to blame for failing to commit adequate resources to the most important recent historical project it has yet undertaken, by Vincent Browne