Rural broadband plan looks offline, Brexit strategy shambles and Love Island

Bank of Ireland has reported a pre-tax profit of € 454 million for the first half of its financial year, as the bank benefited both from its cost-cutting programme and the improving economy, which saw BOI write back some €81 million of previously impaired loans.

The National Broadband Plan looks to be in serious trouble with the withdrawal of SSE from the last remaining consortium bidding for the contract. It's also likely to cost the taxpayer a lot more than initially expected. Eoin Burke-Kennedy reckons it sounds the deathknell for the plan, so it's time for the Government to go come up with an alternative. And promptly.

Chris Johns reckons one of the many curiosities about the shambles that is Brexit is the utterly hopeless negotiation strategy employed by the UK government. "That might be putting things a little strongly: there hasn't been any strategy at all in practice."

More than 1,100 reports of data breaches involving people's personal information have been received by the Data Protection Commission in the two months since a new EU legal regime came into force.

Analysis: National Broadband Plan all but dead in the water

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SoftBank to participate in Dublin’s smart cities test bed

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China flexes muscles by scuppering $44bn chip deal

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Bluetooth tag among lightest and brightest

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McDonald's is ditching the coffee-house style McCafé brand from one of its flagship Irish restaurants. The world's biggest restaurant chain by sales will remove the McCafé from its Grafton Street outlet.

A US medical device-maker with a significant employee base in Limerick has warned that it may struggle to export products from Ireland to the UK from 2020 unless a transition agreement for medical devices is extended. The warning comes as generic drugmaker Mylan calls on the Government to boost its efforts in approving biosimilar drugs for use here in a move that could save the State around €140 million a year.

The Rupert Murdoch-controlled radio company Wireless Group fell to a €9.7 million loss in its most recent set of accounts after revaluing some of the groups assets.

Finally, staying in the media world, reality TV series Love Island, has proved an great buy for TV3 Group, with average per-episode ratings of almost 150,000 this summer up 223 per cent on its last run. The fourth series has drawn an average of 149,000 viewers to TV3 Group's 3e channel in a 9pm slot over the past two months. The finale airs on Monday night.