In The News

The details presented in court in the trial of a Dublin man for the killing of Mackenzie Michalski (31) were harrowing. The American nurse was travelling around Europe with friends and was on her last night in Budapest when, on November 4th, 2024, she met the 37-year-old man from Dublin in a bar. Later they went back to his apartment where he killed her. The judge rejected his defence that Mackenz...

Hard-right leader Marine Le Pen announced her candidacy in France’s 2027 presidential campaign in typically dramatic fashion on French TV this week. It came after an appeal court shortened her sentence for misappropriating European Parliament funds that had previously barred her from running. The court reduced the five-year ban on holding office to 45 months with 30 suspended, meaning that the sus...

On Monday, George Gibney (77), former Irish Olympic swimming coach, was found guilty of sexually abusing four girls in the 1970s and 1980s. After a two-week trial, the jury found him guilty of 39 counts of indecent assault and one count of attempted rape of children. He will be sentenced at the end of the month. One of Ireland’s most notorious paedophiles, he was extradited from Florida last year...

This episode was originally published in March 2026.  Clifton Collins (55) had a thriving business growing cannabis in rented houses around the country. The Crumlin man and expert beekeeper was known for his award-winning honey but his real earner was the fortune he made from years of dealing drugs. He operated under the radar so when gardaí came across him parked in the Wicklow Mountains one...

On a visit to Dublin last week, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy briefly burst the upbeat mood of the EU presidency party by criticising companies based in European countries that continue to supply essential materials to Russia’s military forces. He didn’t need to name the company that was on his mind; all present in Dublin Castle, including Taoiseach Micheál Martin, knew he was referring...

In the next 15 years an additional 400 pedestrians , cyclists and motorcyclists will be killed on European roads because of the increased average car size. The figure is based on projections using data from Eurostat and the UK department of transport. Research by the Transport & Environment (T & E) think tank suggests that those road death figures could be significantly higher. After 25 ye...

Ireland was on the fringe of the heat dome that seared much of Europe for several days late last month. In some parts of the country temperatures exceeded an uncomfortable 32 degrees and the hot spell ended with unseasonable thunderstorms and hail showers. Why is this happening? Climate scientists have recently warned that El Niño would impact temperatures in Europe this year, so is that why two h...

Riad Bouchaker (52), an Algerian native, has been found guilty of the attempted murder of two girls and a boy, as well as a further charge of assault causing serious harm to a childcare worker and three charges of assault causing harm. During the trial Eoin Reynolds talked to Bernice Harrison about evidence the jury heard. Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon and Andrew McNair....

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For the six men and one woman trafficked to Donegal by Georgijs Poniza and Armen Pogosyan, life was unimaginably harsh. They worked long, gruelling hours, lived together in dire conditions, rummaging in public bins for food and walking up to 30km to get to work. When they stepped out of line they were subject to abuse including physical violence.] In the nearly three years they spent in modern sla...

American businessman Jason Cardiff has lived in Ireland with his wife and daughter since 2022. For anyone who has followed him on Facebook, he has been living a life of considerable luxury. The house is on Highfield Road, one of Dublin 6’s most expensive roads, and parked outside is a Bentley. His followers have seen posts showing him golfing in Ireland, travelling to Austria for ski trips as well...

On the morning of June 14th last year, Reykjavik police were called to the luxury 5-star Edition Hotel where the bodies of Emeric Mancel and his adult daughter Catherine were found, along with a wounded Ming Ting Mancel. They had travelled from their home in Dublin for what looked like a weeklong holiday for the reclusive family, but now appears to have been a carefully planned suicide pact. She i...

The beauty industry has found a new audience: children. And it is using other children online – so-called “child skinfluencers” – to promote all kinds of skincare products. Research by The Guardian’s consumer affairs reporter Sarah Marsh found teenage girls on TikTok, as well as Instagram and YouTube, showing their skincare routines, some having become “ambassadors” for major brands. Some will be...

Newly-elected Labour MP Andy Burnham has made no secret of his ambitions to become the next UK prime minister.  Now, it looks as though his time has come. Keir Starmer’s announcement on Monday morning that he is to step down as prime minister paves the way for a leadership contest in the Labour Party, with the leadership of the country the automatic prize. Starmer has said he would stay on un...

The former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson has been found guilty of all 18 child sex abuse charges against him, including rape. His wife Eleanor was also found by the jury to have aided and abetted him, but she was not convicted due to inability to stand trial. The outcome of the trial hinged on whether the jury believed Donaldson or his two victims. Freya McClements explains how the jurors may have...

A new landmark study followed 4,000 primary school children, tracking everything from their education attainment to their wellbeing as they progressed through the school system. The Children’s School Lives study tracked the children from 2019 to 2023. As it coincided with the Covid lockdown years, it revealed a wealth of data, some of it seriously troubling and challenging for policymakers. The lo...

Late on a quiet Sunday night in May, gardaí in Limerick arrived on the scene of what they expected would be a routine call-out to a road traffic incident. Instead they were met with an extraordinary scene. In one of the damaged cars they found a dead man on the back seat. He was wearing a balaclava and there was a loaded pistol at his feet. The driver of the anonymous looking Seat Leon had escaped...

In November 2023 , a group of primary schoolchildren were lined up by the railings outside their school in Dublin city centre, ready to be brought to after-school care. As their minder bent down to close the coat of one of the children, a man launched a vicious knife attack on the children. The alleged assailant was arrested at the scene and the trial of Riad Bouchaker (52), an Algerian native, is...

Terence McKeever left his home in Ballsbridge in Dublin shortly after 6.30am on June 16th, 1986. His daily commute in his distinctive bronze-coloured BMW took him to work in his family’s electrical services firm in Armagh. But on that day, he never arrived. His body was found dumped in a river following an anonymous phone-call to the RUC in south Armagh at 10.45am. The IRA took responsibility for...

When Carlos Barragán discovered his mother was the victim of romance fraud, he flew to Lagos to find the con man – and found the Yahoo Boys, young men whose job it is to rip off westerners. The name comes from the old email platform, first used by the Nigerian scammers decades ago. His mother, Silvia, had fallen in love online with flirtatious, sincere, handsome Brian; she bought rings, planned a...

As World Cup 2026 kicks off, Gianni Infantino’s grip on international football is total. Infantino was brought in to clean up Fifa’s image after the murky Sepp Blatter years, to restore transparency and boost the game globally. But if Fifa thought it was getting a self-effacing, legally trained bureaucrat who would stay in the background, it was very wrong. Now after 10 years at the helm, he is Fi...

Jeffrey Donaldson took the stand in Newry Crown Court on Thursday at his trial on charges of historical child sex abuse. It was the 13th day of the trial, and he was questioned by the defence barrister about the specific allegations made by the two complainants. The former DUP leader told the jury that he does not accept any allegations that he sexually abused two women while they were children. H...

Abusers convicted of serious domestic violence will have their names included on a publicly available register under a new law designed to allow those with concerns to check whether their partner has a violent past. The proposed legislation will be known as Jennie’s Law in honour of Jennifer Poole, a 24-year-old mother of two who was murdered by her former partner Gavin Murphy in 2021. Poole did n...

The event that sparked the racist riots in Belfast on Tuesday evening happened on Monday night in the north of the city. A Sudanese man, named in court as Hadi Alodid, is alleged to have brutally assaulted Stephen Ogilvie in a street knife attack that was filmed by a bystander. Ogilvie lost an eye and is in hospital with other serious injuries. The 30-year-old Alodid has now been charged with knif...

The 24-year sentence handed down to Sean McGovern in the Special Criminal Court prompted gasps in the packed courtroom. It will also have sent shock waves through organised crime in Ireland and all the way to the Dubai prison where Daniel Kinahan is awaiting extradition back to Ireland and an appointment in the same court. McGovern was a senior Kinahan cartel figure, formerly based in Dubai before...