In The News

With a landslide victory for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party predicted, the UK general election looks to be all over bar the shouting.But then this week the shoutiest voice in British politics, Nigel Farage, announced he is to run for Reform UK.Mark Paul explains why that’s more bad news for the Tories – and a jolt of excitement in what has been a dull run up to the July 4th election.Also on Tuesday, Rishi Sunak was judged to have won the first televised leaders debate. The Irish Times London correspondent was in “the spin room” afterwards – upstairs in the Coronation Street visitors’ centre – with party advisers, media and politicians, and he says the Sunak side took the (slight) win as a glimmer of hope.But why, when he’s so far behind?Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.

Have you ever shared a photo of your child wearing her Halloween costume on Instagram? Or, perhaps you’ve uploaded a video of your nephew dancing to TikTok. We live in a world where sharing images of our lives, and in turn the lives of our children, has become completely normalised. But there are serious safety risks and privacy concerns around this type of content. Deepfakes using a child's image and / or voice, identity theft and abusive material are just some of the frightening ways in which young people are at risk when their data is shared, either on an open forum or a messaging app. Leah Plunkett, author of ‘Sharenthood’ and faculty at Harvard law school, explains the pitfalls of sharing images of kids online, the ethical quandary we may unwittingly find ourselves in and how we can protect the young people in our lives.Presented by Sorcha Pollak. Produced by Aideen Finnegan.

On Friday 7th June, the country will go to the polls to decide who should represent us at a local and European level. Voters will elect 14 MEPs to the European Parliament and 949 councillors to 31 local authorities. While it’s easier to feel the tangible changes that are made by city and county councillors, it’s perhaps harder to get a handle on what exactly our MEPs do for us.  So what is the role of the MEP and can they make any difference at a European level?And how did our outgoing MEPs fare over the last five years?Jack Power reports from Brussels.Presented by Aideen Finnegan, produced by Suzanne Brennan. 

This week, father and daughter Tom and Molly Martens will be released from prison after serving just over six months for killing Jason Corbett in 2015. The pair were sentenced last November, following their guilty plea of involuntary manslaughter.  Following the sentencing hearing last year, documentary maker and journalist Brian Carroll spoke to In the News, about the Marten’s case and the Corbett family’s long fight for justice.   This is the first of a two-part episode on the case, originally published in November 2023. In the first part, Caroll explains how the Marten’s used the sentencing hearing to completely annihilate Jason’s Corbett’s character. In episode two, available here, we hear how the Limerick man’s family, including his two children, finally had their day in court to tell the world about their loving father and what their lives were like with their manipulative stepmother. Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.

A plan to reintroduce National Service in Britain has been roundly criticised by former military personnel and opposition parties alike. But serving your country militarily is an accepted part of life in many countries like Finland, Sweden and Israel. Security analyst, Declan Power, explains how people in Scandinavia are predisposed to the idea because it's woven into their life in the same way Gaelic games, our literary history and the 1916 Rising are in this country. The former Irish solder also explains how the same concept wouldn't fly in Ireland and what we need to do instead to beef up our Defence Forces. Power also posits how the military offensive in Gaza may well turn out to expose the flaws in Israel's national service model. Presented by Sorcha Pollak. Produced by Aideen Finnegan.

Earlier this month, Google launched AI Overviews – software which uses artificial intelligence to answer people’s questions quickly, skipping the step of scrolling through links. The new search system has made headlines for generating hilariously incorrect answers, a glitch Google says it is taking swift action to remedy. But this bumpy start will quickly be ironed out, says Irish Times writer Hugh Linehan who wrote this week about the “Googlepocalypse” sweeping the United States. The introduction of this pilot version of Google’s AI Overviews tool has already “significantly harmed” small businesses and content creators who have seen a collapse in web site traffic, and has been described as an extinction-level event for news media. These “devastating effects” are heading quickly our way, says Linehan. So, what is the Googlepocalypse and how will it change how the average person searches the internet? And will a reliance on AI to answer our questions only further enhance the misinformation plaguing the online world?Presented by Sorcha Pollak. Produced by Aideen Finnegan.

In the past week, two incidences of severe air turbulence have made international headlines.More than 100 people were injured and one man died last week when a Singapore Airlines plane flying from London to Singapore hit an unexpected air pocket, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Bangkok.Five days later, on Sunday, six passengers and six crew members were injured following turbulence on a flight from Doha, Qatar to Ireland.Turbulence has always a been a risk factor in aviation, but the ferocity of the sudden extreme turbulence experience on the Singapore Airlines flight was out of the ordinary.However, is this type of extreme, clear-air turbulence becoming more common? And are climate change and warming air currents making turbulence worse?Irish Times environment and science editor Kevin O’Sullivan joins the podcast to discuss the impact of climate change on air travel, while flight attendant Paula Gahan reflects on why she thinks severe flight turbulence is becoming more common.Presented by Sorcha Pollak. Produced by John Casey.

Malachy Browne heads up the New York Times’s visual investigations unit where he and his team investigate key events, from breaking news at home to war atrocities abroad, to piece together second-by-second what really happened.The work exposes the truth of events, particularly ones that are shrouded in misinformation, conspiracy theories and official denials. He and his team have won two Pulitzer Prizes.Investigations, presented on the New York Times website, range from uncovering the devastating sequence of events of the atrocity at Bucha in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to plotting exactly happened in 2017 when a gunman opened fire at a concert in Las Vegas killing 60 people.On In the News he talks about these projects and more while explaining just how his team works, from 3D modelling and AI to painstakingly exploring satellite images and mining phone records, and how the Limerick man who began his career in Dublin before moving to New York works to stay one step ahead in a media landscape flooded with fake news.Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon.

On Wednesday, British prime minister Rishi Sunak stood in the rain outside 10 Downing Street and called a general election. But why? The Tories are performing poorly in the polls and his party is divided.Six weeks out from election day on July 4th, the odds of him winning look slim. By Irish standards, the campaign is long, so is there anything he can do in the run up to election day to change the hearts and minds of British voters or has Labour leader Keir Starmer’s time come?Irish Times London correspondent Mark Paul went to Derby to see Sunak in action on Thursday on his first day of campaigning and he tells In the News about the timing of the election, the disarray in the Tory party and why Sunak is taking the chance of going to the country after less than two years in office.Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan and Declan Conlon.