A glance at the week that was
College charts
The rivalry betwen UCD and TCDwent up a notch this week when Trinity reached number 43 in a survey of global universities – but UCD made its debut in the top 100, getting in at 89.
The rankings put several Irish universities in the top 500 in the world, but Harvard is considered number one. Perhaps it is better than Irish universities in some respects, but does it have a sticky-floored college bar with a sloping pool table? Probably not.
Global ring
It's been a big week in space. First of all, astronomers discovered that Saturn has a giant, three million km ringthat nobody had spotted before. In fairness to them, it's so diffuse that it can't be seen with the naked eye. Then, yesterday, NASA launched a missile at the Moon – not as an act of aggression aimed at the Moomins, but so it could analyse the dust.
The numbers
$1.4 trillionThe size the US budget deficitwill be by the end of the year
1.4mThe number of
contraband cigarettesseized at Dublin Airport over a five-day period
1,523,000The crowd numbers for this year's GAA championshipmatches
We now know
There will be a daily Lotto draw
Almost one in four of the world’s population is Muslim
Ireland’s excise duty on beer is nine times the EU average
