In The News

It seems incredible that no one knows how many data centres there are in Ireland. It could be as many as 100, it could be more. Whatever the number there are several others in the planning stages.

What we do know is that energy consumed by these vast buildings accounted for almost a quarter of the electricity consumed in Ireland last year, up from 5 per cent in 2015.

And, during the long hot summer when domestic water restrictions were imposed, it appeared to be water usage as usual for data centres.

Questions about how they operate are growing. Do they pay less than households for electricity? With the national grid creaking from decades of underinvestment do they even pay enough to cover their costs?

And why is the Government so keen to have them?

Irish Times climate and science correspondent Caroline O’Doherty explains the many questions around data centres while political correspondent Jack Horgan Jones looks at how Government defends the explosion of these vast resource-sapping structures against mounting criticism.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced Aideen Finnegan and Declan Conlon.
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It has long been known that AI poses risks to humanity, but the scale of them is only starting to become clear. And those risks are terrifying.

This month Evan Hubinger, a top scientist at Anthropic, said AI is advancing so quickly he believes there is a greater than 10 per cent chance it “could kill all humans” within the next decade.

Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who has just quit Anthropic and previously worked at OpenAI, has warned of “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionise any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources”.

AI is a multibillion business that’s moving at a speed no one could have predicted. But can it be regulated – and who would actually carry out that function effectively? Are these dire predictions realistic?

Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, director of the AI: Futures and Responsibility Programme at the Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, explains the current thinking on AI threats.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thieves who broke into the Renoir Museum in the south of France escaped with two paintings, having dropped two others as they fled the building.

The value of the works has been estimated at €9 million, but what are they worth now?

Were the thieves stealing to order? And if not, what are they going to do with them?

In a world where provenance dictates price, who would buy a stolen piece of art by one of the most famous and collectible painters?

The theft is just the latest in a series of high-profile art thefts. In March 2026, an organised crime gang stole a Renoir, Matisse and Cézanne from a private museum in Italy, while last year thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris and took jewels worth an estimated €100 million.

Art crime investigator and historian Arthur Brand explains the planning, execution and aftermath of the Renoir thefts.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Andrew McNair.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In late summer, a criminal using the name “SpongeJob” posted a wanted ad on Telegram, an the encrypted messaging service.

He was looking for a hitman to travel to Cyprus to kill two men, twins from the UK. Everything would be supplied, including a gun, for a fee of about €60,000.

His ad was answered, but unbeknown to SpongeJob, the willing gun for hire was the Danish police, who then sent an undercover officer to Cyprus to pose as the hitman and to foil the murders.

That Danish officer was able to tip off the Cypriot police, who arrested three men, two Norwegians and an Irish man who had travelled from Limerick. It is now believed that the hit on the twins was commissioned by veteran criminals with close links to the Kinahan cartel.

For Europol, the Cyprus contract is a prime example of the growing underworld phenomenon of international “violence as a service” (VAAS).

Irish Times investigative reporter Conor Gallagher explains how the hit was planned – and how it then fell apart.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Twenty five years ago al-Qaeda militants hijacked four commercial planes in the US and flew two into the World Trade Center in New York and one into the Pentagon, while the fourth crash-landed in a Pennsylvania field.

Almost 3,000 people were killed on that day and the world was changed forever.

How the US responded to that attack on home soil reverberates still - through everything from airport security to geopolitics – and above all, America’s place in the world. The attack also prompted a rise in Islamophobia.

Denis Staunton, Irish Times correspondent and author of the daily Global Briefing newsletter, explores how the world changed after 9/11 and what might have happened if the US had responded to the attacks in a different way.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.