Every so often you’ll read a newspaper article that stops you in your tracks; one that stays with you long after you have finished it. Malachy Clerkin’s interview with the Olympic athlete Ciara Mageean is one of those.
Mageean, the reigning European 1,500m champion, was told by her doctors last year, at the age of 33, that she had stage four bowel cancer. In her conversation with Clerkin, she recalls with remarkable honesty and eloquence the moment she received the shocking diagnosis and describes the year she has spent adjusting to a reality that seems to make no sense.
“She keeps trucking,” Clerkin writes. “Good days and bad. Sometimes, out of nowhere, she’ll be accosted by the unfairness of it all. It hurts when it happens and she has learned to let it hurt. Learned to find the dark humour in it too.
“’I’ll be sitting on the couch and I’ll be like, ‘F**k. I might be dead in two years. I certainly won’t ... well, I don’t want to say certainly but I probably won’t make my 40th birthday. Like, that’s f**king rough.’”
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If you haven’t read it yet, do.
Earlier this week, when the dispute over public v private maternity care between the Government and the Rotunda hospital in Dublin was leading the news, we asked women to share with us their stories of childbirth in Ireland. The volume of responses took us by surprise; hundreds of women got in touch to tell us of their experience. Ellen Coyne explains the background to the dispute and hears some of those stories, while a fuller selection of the responses can be found in this piece by Jack Brady.
Violence broke out on the streets of Belfast this week when a brutal stabbing in the north of the city was followed by racist riots. In this immersive visual account of the week’s events, Seanín Graham in Belfast and Rachel Lavin, a data journalist with our investigative unit, explain how social media messages from prominent far-right agitators overseas – amplified by the technologist Elon Musk – played a role in triggering the unrest.
“’Foreigners out! Foreigners out!’ was shouted by a crowd of balaclava-clad men in a north Belfast street as they petrol-bombed houses before 11pm on Tuesday,” they write. “Children and pensioners locked themselves into bathrooms for protection.” The piece explains that racial violence now outpaces sectarian attacks in Northern Ireland, having risen by almost a third in the last year.
The future of the Kinahan cartel, once one of Europe’s most powerful drug gangs, is in doubt after a concerted effort by the authorities in Ireland, the US and the Middle East to take on its leaders. Sean McGovern, described in an Irish court as “a senior trusted lieutenant” in the Kinahan crime cartel, was this week jailed for 24 years after he pleaded guilty to two charges of directing the activities of a criminal organisation in the bloody Kinahan-Hutch feud. Daniel Kinahan, son of patriarch Christy Kinahan, is in custody in Dubai, where he awaits extradition to Ireland. “They’re rattled,” one former senior Garda tells Conor Lally in a piece that asks whether this is the beginning of the end for the Kinahan gang. Elsewhere in News, Lally has the story of a Swedish contract killer who was killed in a car crash in Co Limerick while on his way to carry out a murder.
Three months ago, an Irish Times investigation, done in collaboration with the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, revealed that alumina produced at the Aughinish Alumina plant in Co Limerick plant was being shipped to Russian smelters, where it is turned into aluminium and sold to a trading company that supplies Russian arms manufacturers. In his analysis of the positions of Ireland’s political parties on the issue, Cormac McQuinn finds that only two parties say clearly that alumina should be included in sanctions against Russia.
It’s 10 years since British voters opted to leave the European Union. Patrick Freyne returned to Britain this week to see what Leave voters think about that fateful decision. Also in the World section, Keith Duggan has a fine piece on the tensions of modern Los Angeles while Gemma Tipton remembers the late David Hockney, an artist who defied establishment derision to become one of the most influential British artists of the postwar era.
We’re a few days into the World Cup, and Ken Early can’t help but feel bitter watching the Czech Republic – who beat Ireland in a playoff in March – stagger to defeat by South Korea on Thursday night. “In some luckier parallel universe, Ireland were playing in that game,” he writes. “Those empty seats, they wouldn’t have been there ... The presence of a few Tricolours dotted around the arena made you wonder how many of the empties belonged to Irish fans who took a leap of faith before the playoffs, then found no takers for the now-unwanted tickets.”
Keep an eye on our complete guide to the World Cup fixtures and results.
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