A glance at the week that was
The numbers
€72,500
Price of a shirt designed by Amitabh Chandel to cater for Indian’s modern-day royals. It’s silk and buttoned with 25 diamonds. Classy touch.
€127,000
Annual income of Government adviser Ciarán Conlon
after a €35,000 pay rise. Taoiseach Enda Kenny insisted he be paid a premium over the standard €92,000 for departmental advisers.
€7,000
The fine that independent TD Mick Wallace has to pay after failing to make pension contributions for his construction employees.
€23m
The amount Manchester United is estimated to have missed out on after being eliminated from the Champions League by Basel.
49.7%
Percentage of the vote won by Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party in Russia’s Duma election, a result that saw it lose 77 seats.
2
Days between the announcement of cuts in disability allowances and the Government’s U-turn.
Next week you need to know about . . . the Golden Globes
Next Thursday, Hollywood’s long and winding awards season will commence with the announcement of the nominees for the 69th Golden Globe awards. For some of this year’s hopefuls it’s the equivalent of an early Christmas.
The strange thing about the Globes is that the winners play second fiddle to the host: for the past few years the headlines have all been about MC Ricky Gervais, whose style is best described as snarkily offensive. Last year’s victims included stars such as Charlie Sheen and Johnny Depp. Many people, including Gervais, assumed he’d gone too far, but last month it was announced he was back for a third time. “It’s gonna be biblical,” Gervais promised.
As usual, the shindig is seen as an Oscars bellwether, even if the winners at the famously boozy bash often fail to lift an Academy Award. For the record, last year's big winner was The Social Network, which had run out of steam and critical acclaim by the time it came to the Oscars, losing out to The King's Speechin the big categories.
But it’s not all about the award- worthy dramas: for comedy actors in particular it’s a rare evening in a tuxedo receiving awards, with the musical-or-comedy category a rare nod to Hollywood populism. At least they don’t have an action-or-superhero category, which would be stretching it.
The awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, January 15th, so prepare to be exposed to more Ricky Gervais than is recommended in early 2012. - DAVIN O'DWYER
Give me a crash course in . . . Archbishop John Charles McQuaid
Archbishop who?The Catholic archbishop of Dublin from 1940 to 1972. He died in 1973.
That's almost 40 years ago. Why is he in the news?It was disclosed this week that two child sex-abuse complaints against him, as well as a separate "concern", were brought to the attention of the Murphy commission, which investigated the handling of clerical child sex- abuse complaints in the Dublin archdiocese. One complaint alleges the archbishop abused a 12-year-old boy in 1961.
bThe complaints and concern were addressed in a supplementary report published on the commission's website in July. Archbishop McQuaid is not identified in the report but is described as a cleric who "has been dead for many years". The Irish Timeshas established that the cleric is McQuaid.
Clergy accused of child abuse: is that still news?It is unusual in an Irish context for an archbishop, or even a bishop, to be so accused, but McQuaid was no ordinary churchman. He was an iconic figure of 20th-century Ireland. It could be said that he and Éamon de Valera were the two dominant figures of the middle decades of that century.
What did the Murphy commission say about these complaints and "concern"?The commission didn't investigate clerical child-abuse complaints. It investigated how church and State authorities handled such complaints between 1975 and 2004 – which is to say after McQuaid's death.
But did the commission comment on his handling of abuse complaints? It certainly did. McQuaid dealt with Fr Paul McGennis’s abuse of two young girls at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, in Crumlin. McGennis took explicit photographs of the girls and sent the film to an English processing company. It contacted the police, who contacted the Garda. Commissioner Daniel Costigan brought the matter to McQuaid to deal with.
He left it at that?He did. The archbishop called in McGennis, who admitted taking the photographs. He said he was motivated by curiosity about female anatomy. McQuaid noted: "I would get (a doctor) a good Catholic to instruct him and thus end his wonderment." It rested there.
b It found McQuaid's conclusion that McGennis's actions arose from "wonderment" about the female anatomy to be "risible" and found that the way he dealt with McGennis "established a pattern of not holding abusers accountable which lasted for decades". - PATSY MCGARRY
Nothing compares to who?
Sinéad O’Connor’s search for a partner has borne fruit, with the singer marrying new beau Barry Herridge ) in Las Vegas on Thursday, her 45th birthday. She began her search in August.
We now know
The God particle, the Higgs boson, has been found, according to giddy rumours from Cern.
Pope Benedict XVI used a Sony Android tabletto turn on the Vatican Christmas lights.
An FBI computer-hacking investigation is scrutinising Russia's winning 2018 World Cupbid team. The team denies any wrongdoing.
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