Russian president Vladimir Putin urged Russia's neighbours on Friday not to escalate tensions by imposing more restrictions, more than a week after Moscow sent its forces into Ukraine.

Diarmaid Ferriter: When journalist Anna Reid, who lived in Ukraine in the mid 1990s, published her book Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine in 1997 she noted that being a borderland has had two serious consequences for Ukraine.

Patrick Freyne: American teen dramas are just intrinsically weird to the Irish mind. In the same manner in which female roles in Shakespeare's plays were played by male actors back in the olden days, teenagers in American dramas are played by fully grown adults with, I presume, children and mortgages.

I recently ventured to the 3 Arena to see the Lumineers, who visited Dublin as part of their Brightside tour. Earlier in the day, I was unsure if I wanted to travel from Galway to Dublin to see a band with which I was largely unfamiliar.

Patrick Stewart is slightly surprised to be talking about the impending second series of Star Trek: Picard, during a break from shooting the third in California.

The night the bombing began, Kristina Vynnyk tried to explain to her six-year-old daughter Zlata what the thuds were coming from Kyiv's Hostomel Airport near their home. "I told her there was some bad guy outside and he was scattering bad things," she said.

Monica Bellucci has been asked about her beauty for close on four decades.The Italian-born actor – who started out as a model and holds the somewhat ambiguous distinction of becoming the oldest Bond girl – has caused many male journalists to overheat.

John Boyne has revealed that he has written a sequel to his bestselling 2006 novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which will be published by Transworld on September 15th.