KYIV SO TEAM UKRAINE has sacked its popular young manager and replaced him with an older unpopular hard-ass. In what can only be described as a lacklustre season, the eastern European nation appears to need a fresh head at the helm. “Yeah, we were going forward, they were going back. Then they were going forward…

BELGRADE, THURSDAY IT USED TO be almost a daily occurrence, particularly in the southern states of the US, but recently you can’t find a teacher sleeping with her student for love nor money, and it may yet affect the bottom line of some major new outlets. “Where have all the cougars gone?” asks English journalist…

TENNESSEE IT WAS ONE of the most famous trials of the age, the subject of a Hollywood movie starring Spencer Tracy, and the last hurrah of a man who three times sought the presidency of the United States. It was the Scopes Monkey Trial, held in Tennessee in 1925. It centred on a school teacher…

BRUSSELS STAFF SUPPORTERS OF DUP chief Sir Jeffrey Donaldson are said to be frantically trying to reassure Ulster’s Unionists, that his comments that the deal that brought his party back to Stormont to serve under a Sinn Fein First Minister protected the union, refer to the British union and not the European Union. “Many hard-line…

MI5 HEADQUARTERS, HOLYWOOD, BELFAST HARDENED LOYALISTS SAY they are convinced that whoever wore a wire and leaked discussions at the crucial DUP party meeting that decided on re-entry to Stormont, earlier this week, was a long-time well-schooled informer with the skill and cold nerve to walk and talk among trusting friends and then betray their…

BELFAST “NO MATTER HOW you spin this, it’s historic. Unionists serving under a Republican First Minister. The Fenians aren’t just about the place, they’re in charge.” Professor Manus Og Connolly-Pearse-Plunkett-Clarke-Ceannt-McDermott-McDonagh of the Whatever You Say Say Nothing Foundation, an Irish Republican prisoner support group based in Boston, Massachusetts, was visibly tearful when he spoke to…

FROM OUR LONDON STAFF IF THE RUMOURS are correct, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has promised to place the UK in the position of a vassal state of the European Union to try and get the Democratic Unionist Party back into devolved power sharing in Northern Ireland. The Tory leader is said to have committed…

KYIV THE FIVE STAGES of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. Currently, the West is in the first stage with respect to Ukraine. It is teetering on the edge of the second, searching around for people to blame. The anger stage may be short and bleed seamlessly into the bargaining stage without…

LONDON “SHE DIDN’T SAY that his mother loves him, but she left out little else. It was a ghastly example of the please please love me statement desperate leaders and their governments resort to when they have run out of other options.” These words, spoken by a senior lobby correspondent at the British Parliament in…

BEIJING THE RECENT VISIT to Dublin of Chinese Premier Li Quang has left commentators speculating that he carried with him, as well as a desire for closer ties, his own country’s strong support for the Confucian solution of one country, two systems for a United Ireland. The Chinese have applied this principle in Hong Kong…