In The News

Mark Hennessy, Ireland and Britain editor at The Irish Times, gives on-the-ground courtroom reporting. He describes tense exchanges in court, Gerry Adams' denials and demeanour, disputed authorship of prison columns, the plaintiffs' vindicatory motive and funding, and legal arguments over timing and abuse-of-process. The episode focuses on the trial setting and what may come next.

Mary Carolan, legal affairs correspondent at The Irish Times, explains the recent court steps that let Meath County Council seize the property. Caroline O'Doherty, science correspondent who tracked the saga for decades, provides the long background. They discuss the unauthorised build, decades of retention bids and appeals, the Supreme Court rulings and why the council moved to take possession now.

If you got an invoice you’d been waiting for from your builder for work done, you’d get ready to pay it, wouldn’t you?And if, a couple minutes after that, you got another invoice from the builder saying that actually he’d made a mistake and he’d given you the wrong bank details, you’d think nothing of it and proceed to pay.Well that’s exactly what the reader who contacts our consumer affairs correspondent Conor Pope did. She sent the requested €30,000 to her builder and thought nothing more of it – until a week later when her builder contacted her politely wondering if where the payments was.She is tech savvy, has been made aware through her work about all kinds of fraud, and is cautious by nature yet she had been the victim of payment redirection fraud – also known as invoice fraud.Conor Pope came into the studio to explain how this scam worked and why this particular case should be a lesson to everyone who believes invoice scams are only targeted at big business.Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alan Titley, writer and columnist with a keen eye for regional Irish and cultural history, and Cormac Breathnach, terminology specialist from Focloir.ie, explain how new Irish words are coined and recorded. They talk about community coinage, monthly committee decisions, transliteration versus loanwords, regional creativity, and the challenge of choosing fleeting trends to enter dictionaries.

Cormac Breathnach, Foclóir.ie project manager working on adding new Irish words to online dictionaries, and Alan Titley, writer and commentator on Irish-language literature, talk about how English loanwords like binge-watch and influencer become part of Irish. They discuss how everyday speech coins or adapts terms. They explain how focloir.ie evaluates and documents new vocabulary and the debates around purity versus natural change.

Inna Sovsun, a Ukrainian MP from the Holos party, speaks about life under relentless attack and keeping parliament running during war. She describes harsh winters, power cuts and the strain on civilians. She discusses how peace talks have been shaped, the timing of Russian strikes and wider regional impacts on Ukraine.

Sally Hayden, an Irish Times foreign correspondent based in Beirut who covers humanitarian impact and displacement. She describes relentless Israeli strikes, mass displacement and shelters filled with families and children. She explains evacuation warnings, confused maps and life in makeshift shelters. She reflects on political pressures, front line uncertainty and why she remains reporting from Beirut.

News that Kinahan cartel founder Christy Kinahan snr and his sons, Daniel and Christopher jnr, have not left the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for four years offers real insight into how small their world has become.Garda sources say that finding the Kinahans has never been the problem for the teams of detectives investigating them. What has proved difficult is building a case against the men who are the reported leaders of one of the biggest drugs cartels in the world.According to crime and security editor Conor Lally they are literally too scared to leave the UAE for fear of losing control of their lives and their liberty. Why? And why have they not been brought to justice given that a Garda file on the Kinahan leadership was submitted to the DPP in 2023.Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan and Andrew McNair. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Malachy Browne, Head of Visual Investigations at The New York Times, explains how his team used satellite imagery, video and open-source sleuthing to reconstruct a deadly strike on a girls' primary school in Iran. He discusses matching footage to imagery, plume and impact analysis, signs pointing to US munitions, and the challenges of disinformation and AI-altered media.

As the conflict in Iran continues and spreads, global markets are down and oil prices are soaring. So what impact could the conflict have on the global economy and on energy costs here in Ireland? Irish Times economics columnist Cliff Taylor explains what we know. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.