In The News The Irish Times

Young adolescents have “greater peer problems” and fewer friends than their counterparts a decade ago, with girls especially experiencing “increased emotional difficulties”, according to a new report from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
The study looks at changes in 13-year-olds’ relationships with their parents and peers, in their day-to-day activities and in their experiences of school. 
 
Irish Times Social affairs Correspondent Kitty Holland joins us today to talk through some of the reports findings.

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Earlier this month, Google launched AI Overviews – software which uses artificial intelligence to answer people’s questions quickly, skipping the step of scrolling through links. The new search system has made headlines for generating hilariously incorrect answers, a glitch Google says it is taking swift action to remedy. But this bumpy start will quickly be ironed out, says Irish Times writer Hugh Linehan who wrote this week about the “Googlepocalypse” sweeping the United States. The introduction of this pilot version of Google’s AI Overviews tool has already “significantly harmed” small businesses and content creators who have seen a collapse in web site traffic, and has been described as an extinction-level event for news media. These “devastating effects” are heading quickly our way, says Linehan. So, what is the Googlepocalypse and how will it change how the average person searches the internet? And will a reliance on AI to answer our questions only further enhance the misinformation plaguing the online world?
Presented by Sorcha Pollak. Produced by Aideen Finnegan.

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In the past week, two incidences of severe air turbulence have made international headlines.
More than 100 people were injured and one man died last week when a Singapore Airlines plane flying from London to Singapore hit an unexpected air pocket, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Bangkok.
Five days later, on Sunday, six passengers and six crew members were injured following turbulence on a flight from Doha, Qatar to Ireland.
Turbulence has always a been a risk factor in aviation, but the ferocity of the sudden extreme turbulence experience on the Singapore Airlines flight was out of the ordinary.
However, is this type of extreme, clear-air turbulence becoming more common? And are climate change and warming air currents making turbulence worse?
Irish Times environment and science editor Kevin O’Sullivan joins the podcast to discuss the impact of climate change on air travel, while flight attendant Paula Gahan reflects on why she thinks severe flight turbulence is becoming more common.
Presented by Sorcha Pollak. Produced by John Casey.

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Malachy Browne heads up the New York Times’s visual investigations unit where he and his team investigate key events, from breaking news at home to war atrocities abroad, to piece together second-by-second what really happened.
The work exposes the truth of events, particularly ones that are shrouded in misinformation, conspiracy theories and official denials. He and his team have won two Pulitzer Prizes.
Investigations, presented on the New York Times website, range from uncovering the devastating sequence of events of the atrocity at Bucha in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to plotting exactly happened in 2017 when a gunman opened fire at a concert in Las Vegas killing 60 people.
On In the News he talks about these projects and more while explaining just how his team works, from 3D modelling and AI to painstakingly exploring satellite images and mining phone records, and how the Limerick man who began his career in Dublin before moving to New York works to stay one step ahead in a media landscape flooded with fake news.
Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon.

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On Wednesday, British prime minister Rishi Sunak stood in the rain outside 10 Downing Street and called a general election. But why? The Tories are performing poorly in the polls and his party is divided.
Six weeks out from election day on July 4th, the odds of him winning look slim. By Irish standards, the campaign is long, so is there anything he can do in the run up to election day to change the hearts and minds of British voters or has Labour leader Keir Starmer’s time come?
Irish Times London correspondent Mark Paul went to Derby to see Sunak in action on Thursday on his first day of campaigning and he tells In the News about the timing of the election, the disarray in the Tory party and why Sunak is taking the chance of going to the country after less than two years in office.
Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan and Declan Conlon.

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A pair of trainers for the price of a sandwich; a Dyson-dupe hair straightener for a fraction of the real thing – just about everything you can think of buying, and random, bizarre things you couldn’t even imagine exist, are for sale via Temu, the ecommerce app that is taking over the online shopping world. With millions of bargains, it promises buyers can “shop like a billionaire”.
In January 2024, the app recorded nearly 47.8 million downloads worldwide. Once you buy from Temu, the bombardment of emails begins, offering deals and discounts on already rock-bottom prices.
But authorities worldwide have been quick to investigate; to warn for example that some toys and electrical goods on the site do not meet safety standards. And the US State Department has cautioned that the labour conditions in some of the factories that make the goods for the third-party sellers on Boston-headquartered Temu could amount to forced labour.
So while the prices might be attractive, the quality of some of the products and relentless sales techniques are less so according to Irish Times consumer editor Conor Pope who explains Temu’s business model and why it has got such a hold so quickly.
Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.

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