MONDAY

The country becomes aware of the appalling events in Bray, Co Wicklow when the full circumstances involved in the murder of one 22-year-old by another who then commits suicide emerge. The intensity of the passion that unleashes such madness and extreme violence within a quiet, middle-class community inevitably makes us all curious for more details. But in a world of ridiculous reality television and a media hooked on confessional journalism, have we become incapable of knowing when to stop craving the smallest minutiae of other people's pain and tragedy? Sebastian Creane needs to be mourned and his family's private grief protected. Shane Clancy's actions need to be understood so that other families and friends understand and recognize the warning signs that trigger such murderous intent. The mental health services need to learn too. But there is surely a balance between what we need to know and what we want to know.

TUESDAY

Great. X Factor is back on Saturday but post Susan Boyle's Britain's Got Talent blowout, the production company Talkbackthames, which makes both hugely popular ITV shows, has said contestants getting into the later stages will be given a full psychological appraisal. Boyle suffered oxygen deprivation at birth and has learning disabilities, something the programme-makers only found out after she charmed an audience initially inclined to mock her for her looks. It left Boyle vulnerable to a breakdown and the producers open to charges of exploitation... Charm is a tactic Amy Moran-McGirr hopes to use in Ireland's homegrown X Factor, the Rose of Tralee festival – a beauty contest that isn't about beauty and a talent contest that allows pretty competitors to "recite a poem" or dance a jig. Host Ray D'Arcy insists the show isn't dated – the girls are "too feisty and modern", he patronises, while size-16 Cork rose Amy Moran-McGirr, who has been subjected to sour comments over her weight, insists she is proud to fly the flag for "the other women in Ireland who aren't supermodels". As the old saying goes, never explain – your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe you anyway. Methinks both Ray and Amy protest too much.

WEDNESDAY

Oil prices continue to fall, now below US$69 a barrel. Over a barrel, however, are we motorists. Petrol is now on average 120.9 cent a litre – and rising. We're supposed to be able to afford it... Irish professionals are the fourth highest paid of 73 countries across the world surveyed by the Swiss bank UBS in its latest global Prices and Earnings report.

It takes us just 10 hours to earn enough to buy an iPod (expensive as they are here), while Mumbai's slumdog millionaires have to work for 177... Never mind the iPod, where's the botox? That, says consumer analysts Mintel, is a true barometer of the downturn. Mintel has found that women who used to spend as much as €500 a pop on skincare products are trading down – to botox... But not even a course of botox can make you the world's most powerful woman. That honour, says Forbes magazine, goes to Angela Merkel for the fourth year in a row, all the more seductive for rising above gender stereotypes – and being botox free.

THURSDAY

Afghans go to vote amid rocket attacks, Taliban intimidation and widespread personation. Their courage is great, but the turnout is deemed low .You desperately hope that these elections may change life for ordinary Afghans, but how can they? Will democracy bring freedom when corruption within the political system is endemic? What difference can it make to the woman who, though granted the right to vote, was registered by her husband or father, knows nothing of politics because she can neither read nor write, and can't exercise her vote because she isn't allowed out of the house – for "cultural reasons" of course.

For "compassionate reasons", the only person to be convicted of involvement in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing is freed. Abdel Baset al-Megrahi returns to Libya and receives a hero's welcome. He has terminal prostate cancer but the reception he gets makes the families of those who died regard Libya as dancing on the graves of the Lockerbie dead.

FRIDAY

Hospitalised developer Liam Carroll wins the right to replead his case for court protection for his insolvent Zoe group of companies after two of his fellow directors and his wife testify that stress made him refuse to present his company's real recovery plan to both the High Court and the Supreme Court the last time out. ACC Bank, which wants to recover €136m in loans from Zoe, says this is "frankly pathetic" but Mr Justice John Cooke is minded to be merciful, not because of Carroll's stress, but because all the other banks, employees and creditors that are owed hundreds of millions, want to keep the companies afloat. It's a race against time as they try to keep Zoe alive long enough for Nama to be born. There's a soap opera storyline in that.

You cannot be serious

"No comment."

Ceann Comhairle John O'Donoghue refuses – again – to deny, explain, apologise or best of all, resign, over his expenses. This time we learn that the chauffeur company, paid €17,000 of taxpayers' money for a Cheltenham hooley, was owned by Terry Gallagher, son of an FF crony, former minister for the Gaeltacht, Denis Gallagher.