It would be easy to write about HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) in the all-too-familiar context of social disadvantage, hard core drug use and promiscuous sexual behaviour. But that would miss the point. HIV is like many serious illnesses or diseases, its onset triggered by what is euphemistically referred to as ‘risky behaviour’. Yet we all engage in ‘risky behaviour’ to a greater or lesser degree.
On March 26 1993, US citizen Annie McCarrick disappeared from her home in Sandymount. Chief investigators tell Deirdre Cashion why this cold case still haunts them 20 years later.
Easter Monday, April 12 1993. Brian McCarthy pulls up a bar stool at the Clontarf Castle Hotel in Dublin’s Northside. He’s just a stone’s throw from the seafront where the locals are enjoying a bright, clear, crisp day along the popular promenade. But dark clouds far away on the horizon threaten the dazzling warmth of the early afternoon sun.
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It’s a familiar if not rare experience for many of us – waking with a sudden dart in the dead of night, heart pounding, pulse racing, brainwaves flooded with flashback images and an overwhelming sense of anxiety and confusion permeating our rousing consciousness.
While more common in children, adults can also suffer from persistent nightmares or night terrors from time to time. It’s a condition that can be very debilitating for those, whose sleep is regularly interrupted by spurious things that go bump in the night.
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X-Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos and boyfriend, Danny Simpson recently underscored their love with a trip to the local tattoo studio. Closer to home, Deirdre Cashion talks to tattoo fans about their passionate love of body art.
Tattoos are no longer the preserve of the celebrity footballer, pervasive pop princess, criminal overlord or street junkie. People of all ages and from all walks of life are decorating their bodies, inspired by fashionable trends or by their own artistic creativity and life experience.
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Are women forced to choose between family life and public life? Both can co-exist four female TDs tell Deirdre Cashion but it’s hardly child’s play.
‘Weekend’ spoke to our young female TDs about motherhood, the challenges of public life, gender quotas and the prospect of a female Taoiseach ever taking leaders’ questions in the Dáil.
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AN EMPTY chair at this Sunday’s Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration will serve as a painful reminder that the community has lost one of its most passionate and colourful commentators on the horrors of genocide. Holocaust survivor Zoltan Zinn-Collis, who passed away last December, aged 72, at his home in Athy, Co Kildare, will be sadly missed by those who gather to remember the victims of Nazi atrocities.
Now and again a movie comes along, whose powerful and disturbing images stay with you long after the credits have rolled. Now and again an extraordinary screen performance evokes such intense pain and raw emotion that you leave the theatre stunned into silence, almost numbed by the previous 115 minutes of pure cinematic genius.
When Richard ‘Bruno’ Hauptmann was condemned to the electric chair for the 1932 abduction and murder of the Lindbergh baby, law enforcement agencies knew that he didn’t act alone. In a revealing new book, released on the 80th anniversary of the kidnapping, German emigrant, John Knoll is unmasked as the real mastermind behind the “Crime of the Century”.
40 years later, members of the 1972 Irish Olympic squad reflect on one of the most dramatic weeks of their lives.
With dreams in their pockets and hope in their hearts, over 7,000 athletes from 121 countries converged on the city of Munich on 26 August 1972, for the opening ceremony of the 20th Olympiad.But the joy of medal success would soon be shattered by tragic events at 31 Connollystrasse.
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Thousands of angry protestors recently demanded the immediate closure of America’s largest canvas prison compound in Maricopa County, Arizona. But can the Irish penal system learn a thing or two from Sheriff Joe Arpaio?
The mercury rises to an unbearable 53 degrees Celsius. The searing, mid-day, desert sun beams down on the canvas roof of the tent compound – the only protection, which 2,000 men and women have from the relentless, blistering heat.
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