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Irish Times

July 2026

A week of deep emotions in Ireland: It started with unbridled joy, ended in unvarnished grief

Stephen McIvorpsychologist
It’s always the advantage to be the underdog,... it freed them up.”
Rick O'Sheahost
You can hear it’s not the easiest thing to talk about.”
Lisa O'Neill (singer-songwriter)singer
He believed in younger musicians.”
I’ve seen people more downbeat at losing a final.”
As the great military strategist Helmuth von Moltke said: ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy,
Oliver Callanirish comedian
The outpouring of mania has been delightful,
I have never ever, ever, ever felt what was in the stadium at the final whistle yesterday,

Galway’s Kate Geraghty aiming to cash in on lessons learned in All-Ireland final

Kate Geraghtygalway captain
In 2019, it was a bit different because it was the first final in a long time, so there was probably huge excitement,
Kate Geraghtygalway captain
Well, I don’t care what we’re viewed as really,
Kate Geraghtygalway captain
I think they were huge underdogs, nobody really backed them at all,
Yeah, the pressure is probably on Kerry,
Yeah, I suppose it probably would have been plain sailing otherwise, we would have thought we were a better team than we were if we had won that game,
The last 10 minutes of that game, we just didn’t have enough control,

Hong Kong’s revival contrasts with crackdown on last remaining independent bookshops

Marco Rubiosecretary of state
The circumstances had changed in the president’s judgment,
Thank you, everyone, for your support over the past 50 years since the shop opened. Thank you and take care,
It’s cheaper and better. They cook in pork fat over there and it makes everything taste better,
A lot of people here don’t like China but I’m not like that,

Ancient smallpox DNA recovered from mummies by TCD researchers

They recovered ancient viral DNA from the mummies of two people who died during the early Spanish colonial period in an Inca community in northern Chile

Shigeki Nakagomegeneticist
Smallpox was one of the most devastating infectious diseases in human history,
González‌said ‌Bruno ​Romero
The earliest documented smallpox outbreak in the Americas occurred on the island of Hispaniola in 1518, while it was being settled by the Spanish,
Constanza de la Fuente Castrostudy coauthor
The individuals were naturally mummified and buried in bundles, wrapped in camelid wool blankets and accompanied by various grave goods,
It is important to distinguish between artificial and natural mummification. While their bodies were wrapped in textiles, they were not chemically or physically altered like Egyptian mummies. This practice of bundle burial predates the Inca and was common across earlier periods,

Trump says agreement reached for disarmament of Hamas in Gaza, but support uncertain

Donald TrumpuS President
This agreement is a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people,
Israel demands the complete disarmament of Hamas, including the removal of weapons from Gaza and the complete demilitarization of the Strip as a precondition for any process,
Ghazi Hamadfriday, Hamas official
The agreement contains a clear provision stating that Israel must commit to and implement its obligations. If Israel does not implement the agreement, neither will we.”
At the same time, Israel will have the security it deserves,
Ghazi Hamadfriday, Hamas official
We will not take any action regarding disarmament prior to Israel’s withdrawal from the Strip,

Companies rethinking approach of pushing staff to just use AI more

Some Amazon developers must be suffering whiplash about how they use AI

Ravin Jesuthasanamerican economist (1968-)
This year for the first time I started to see a maturing of the AI conversation. Now we need to see a return on it, rather than spraying and praying.”
Dave Treadwellamazon senior vice-president
Please don’t use AI just for the sake of using AI,
We say, how many times did you challenge what AI said? How many times did you override what it said? Did you capture that decision? Were you right most of the time? Were you wrong most of the time
For us, limiting innovation by putting arbitrary targets and limits on certain things is a very difficult conversation to have. We want [our] 270,000 people to come up with ideas they haven’t had and deliver the next innovation that will change the way we work.”
They are pushing us to adapt our problems to the tool rather than the other way around. We’re in a ‘move quickly, adopt it fast, we’ll see where we are later’ mode,
David Jacksonchief executive
We just wanted people to use the technology; we were less concerned about what they did with it,
I’ve always been a believer that carrots are quite a bit more powerful than sticks and so I think we’ve tried to try to lean more to carrots.”
It removes my choice... It should be up to people like me to decide what’s the best tool to use. I don’t feel I should be penalised for not using a tool I don’t feel like using.”
Tanuj Kapilashramichief Human Resources Officer - Standard Chartered Bank
I think the days of ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’, tech for the sake of tech, encouraging experimentation without it being rooted in the real commercial realities of your business... are gone for most businesses.”

Italy suspends EU Schengen free-travel pact with Spain over Ceuta crisis

As the president of Spain, I believe firmly that Morocco is a partner country, it’s a country that is a friend of Spain and it should continue this way,
The situation is absolute chaos,
The government can’t look the other way,... because we are facing a national security crisis.”
It has been a slow trickle since the supreme Court’s ruling, but today has been an explosion.”
We’re mobilising all necessary resources, working with Moroccan and international authorities, and preparing the necessary measures to restore normalcy as soon as possible,
We’re not looking for privileges; we’re looking for a fair and responsible solution in line with our reality,

Anthropic’s Claude AI models hack into 3 outside groups during testing

Ultimately, many factors contributed to these incidents, but, consistent with a blameless postmortem culture, we're approaching the fixes as if the responsibility were ours alone,
In all cases, Anthropic’s evaluation prompt specified to Claude that its environment was a simulation and that it had no internet access. Due to a misunderstanding between us and our evaluation partner [Irregular], this was not the case and internet access was available,
A misunderstanding” gave Claude access to the

Euro zone inflation rises to 2.9% in July

Euro zone inflation rose to 2.9 per cent in July, bolstering the case for the European Central Bank (ECB) to raise interest rates again in September to contain the price pressures unleashed by the war in the Middle East