In The News

US commentator Tucker Carlson interviewed MAGA figurehead Steve Bannon about Irish society and politics in the wake of the Dublin riots. The men agreed Ireland is a ‘powder keg’ ready to explode thanks to a sinister globalist conspiracy. Then comedian Russell Brand tackled the subject on his online show, touching on the same themes and coming down heavily on Ireland’s proposed new hate speech laws...

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is a “breathless rollick” says Irish Times chief film correspondent Donald Clarke; Joaquin Phoenix makes the character his own and Vanessa Kirby is a terrific Josephine. But since its release, historians have been carping from the aisles pointing out the inaccuracies in the sprawling blockbuster. Among other things they point out that Napoleon didn’t fire on the pyramids; h...

COP28, the UN’s annual climate change summit kicks off today in Dubai. This year the COP President is Sultan Al Jaber, who is both the UAE’s special envoy on Climate Change and the CEO of the State’s oil and gas company Adnoc. Campaigners have likened his appointment to a tobacco CEO chairing a forum on cancer cures. So how damaging is this to the credibility of COP and how can this conflict...

Last week's stabbing attack on primary school children and subsequent riot have left Dublin city shaken. One child and her after-school carer are still in a serious condition, as is the man who is suspected of attacking them. Street violence has left immigrants and city-centre workers fearful. And the political fallout is serious - especially for Minister for Justice Helen McEntee. Conor Gallagher...

When musician and therapist Ailie Blunnie first caught Covid in 2021, she expected to recover quickly. Yet, more than two years later, the once active 38-year-old has never returned to full health and lives with symptoms of long covid, including chronic fatigue and exhaustion. In this episode, Blunnie talks to Sorcha Pollak about how she manages this debilitating illness. We also hear from long co...

RTÉ’s TV advertisements have been good fun with new Late Late host Patrick Kielty getting advice from some very opinionated children on how he should present The Late Late Toy Show. The bottom line – don’t mess up. The station bosses will be hoping the same thing when the razzamatazz kicks off tonight. There’s a lot at stake – not least the fact that the annual toyfest is a cash-cow for the cash-p...

The streets of Dublin city centre were ablaze on Thursday night, with at least one Garda vehicle, a double-decker bus and a Luas tram set alight and several shops looted. In the wake of the stabbing attack on several schoolchildren on Parnell Square, a major riot broke out on O’Connell Street, the city centre’s main thoroughfare, and surrounding streets. Large numbers of gardaí were mobilised in a...

Javier Milei will be sworn in as president of Argentina next month. But just why is this political outsider called "The Madman" - and what can Argentinians expect from his administration? Tom Hennigan reports. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last weekend, millionaire businessman and former Dunnes Stores chief executive Ben Dunne died suddenly in Dubai. He was 74 years of age, In 1992, Dunne made headlines again when he was arrested in his Florida hotel room for cocaine possession. Shortly afterwards, back in Ireland, Dunne’s siblings moved against him to wrest control of Dunnes Stores from him. It was this intense family feud that led...

Documentary maker and journalist Brian Carroll was in court for the sentencing hearing of Molly Martens and her father Thomas for the killing of Molly’s husband Jason Corbett. For two weeks the strategy of their defence team was to paint the brutal killing that took place in the bedroom of the couple’s home in August 2015 as an act of self-defence. In episode two we hear how the Limerick man’s fam...

Documentary maker and journalist Brian Carroll was in court for the sentencing hearing of Molly Martens and her father Thomas for the killing of Molly’s husband Jason Corbett. For two weeks the strategy of their defence team was to paint the brutal killing that took place in the bedroom of the couple’s home in August 2015 as an act of self-defence. In episode one we hear how the Limerick man’s cha...

When Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997 it was under a ‘One Country, Two Systems’ governance model that guaranteed the continuation of a free press, an independent judiciary and the capitalism that underpins the former British colony’s wealth. The agreement was to stay in place until 2047 but in the past decade China has begun stamping out key freedoms, with XI Jingping apparently inte...

For decades, a flood of foreign money has poured into the island of Cyprus, bringing extreme wealth to a few, but leaving the EU member status with a reputation as a shady financial hub. On Tuesday, the eight-month Cyprus Confidential investigation, carried out by dozens of journalists across the globe, revealed the sheer scale of dirty money that has been moved through Cyprus for oligarchs, tyran...

Why has UK prime minister Rishi Sunk brought former prime minister David Cameron in from the cold after all these years? And what will Stella Braverman, fired as Home Secretary but still powerful on the right of the Conservative Party, do next? We ask London correspondent Mark Paul. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For Irish beef producers, China is a prize – capture that vast market and the troubled sector is secure. And Chinese influence in Asia means cracking that market is the key to opening others in the region such as South Korea. The Chinese though – mindful of the horrific global health crisis around beef in the 1990s – have a zero tolerance of BSE, a bovine disease that when it enters the food chain...

Since September, three nursing homes have been forced to close – in Kilkenny, Waterford and Cork. The residents, all vulnerable and elderly have had to be placed in new care facilities. All were private nursing homes, run by Aperee Living, part of a group of 10 such homes. The move follows highly critical reports by Hiqa which found serious issues in each of the homes. In some, the issues included...

Around forty Irish citizens remain trapped inside Gaza after their names were not included on the list of foreign nationals allowed to leave the besieged area. On today’s podcast, Ibrahim Alagha, who usually lives in Blanchardstown with his wife and three children, describes the danger and hunger his family are facing on a daily bases. And Mark Weiss, who reports for The Irish Times in Israel, ref...

A child’s understanding of war, and why it happens, begins and ends with their parents. But as a parent, knowing the right thing to say is not always easy. Should we shield our children from the news coming out of war zones like Gaza or Ukraine? Or should we just explain, as best we can, what is unfolding in these countries? As part of her parenting series for The Irish Times, columnist Jen Hogan...

An investigation by the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) unearthed an underground “banking” network offering an international money transfer system to Irish criminals. It allowed Irish drug gangs to move cash to continental Europe at low risk and without trace. The first step in this process was to bring the ill-gotten money to a local Chinese restaurant. Irish Times Crime Editor Conor Lally interview...

Molly Martens and her father Thomas Martens have agreed a plea deal with prosecutors in the United States to accept a lesser manslaughter charge over the 2015 killing of Molly’s husband, Limerick man Jason Corbett. The pair were convicted of second-degree murder in 2017 but were successful in having the conviction overturned. Irish Times Washington correspondent Martin Wall has been in court all w...

On Saturday, Brazilian Deliveroo rider João Ferreira was hit by a Garda car on the M50, while attempting to recover a stolen motorcycle. The 23 year-old lost part of his right leg in the incident. In this episode journalist Isabella Boechat tells Sorcha Pollak how the events unfolded as a group of riders tracked down the missing vehicle and explains how the Brazilian community in Ireland is callin...

On December 16th, 1983, after 23 days in captivity, kidnapped supermarket executive Don Tidey was rescued. He had been taken by members of the Provisional IRA posing as gardaí while driving his daughter to school in Dublin. With the whole country transfixed by the kidnapping, Garda intelligence tracked the culprits and their victim down to Derrada Wood outside Ballinamore in Co Leitrim. And while...

Hollywood is on strike. It’s about money of course, but at its heart is changing technology: the way streamers, such as Netflix and Apple TV have altered the way actors and writers work and are paid, and how AI is set to curb the income potential of many in the film and TV business. Irish Times chief film correspondent Donald Clark explains just why the industry is on the picket lines, what it mea...

Earlier this month multinational food giant Nestlé announced the shocking news that it is to close its Wyeth Nutrition plant in Askeaton, Co Limerick with a loss of 540 jobs. And the blame? China’s falling birth rate. The plant which has been providing steady employment in the region for decades produces one thing – baby formula. The company stated: “The number of newborn babies in China has decli...

Earlier this week, Yousef Palani was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering two men and seriously assaulting a third during a spree of violence in Sligo town in April 2022. In the space of just two days, Michael Snee and Aidan Moffit were found murdered in their own homes. A third man, Anthony Burke, had been viciously attacked and blinded in one eye a few days earlier. All three victims wer...