Berlin
"The words of John F Kennedy spoken in Berlin so long ago resonate loudly today." So writes Ultan Ó Broin, of Amsterdam, in a letter to the Irish Times.
"Ich bin ein Berliner" indeed. And there is a sombre photograph on the front page of the Times. It shows the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, with the country's foreign minister and interior minister, and the mayor of Berlin. They are standing, with grim faces, on a street in the city where 12 people died after a 40-tonne lorry was driven into a Christmas market on Monday.
That paper, like the others, reports that police have released without charge a man they had thought to be the culprit. Derek Scally reports them as saying: "We need to work on the assumption that an armed perpetrator is still on the loose."
"Truck killer could strike again," says the front page lead headline in the Irish Daily Mirror. "Killer on the loose" is the headline in the Irish Daily Star.
The Times quotes Chancellor Merkel, who said in a television address: "Even if it is difficult at a time like this, we will find the strength to live the life we want to live in Germany: free, united and open."
Passport checks
Meanwhile, the Irish Independent's lead story is headlined: "Passport checks to target jihadis". Tom Brady reports that immigration officers at Dublin Airport can now carry out instant checks on passports with an Interpol database. Until recently, checks with Interpol could only be carried out where there were already suspicions.
Sophie Toscan du Plantier
It was twenty years ago this week that the battered body of a French woman, Sophie Toscan du Plantier, was found outside her house near Schull, in west Cork. In the Irish Examiner, over two pages Michael Clifford considers the twists and turns of a murder investigation in which nobody has been charged.
On its front page the Examiner reports that the former journalist Ian Bailey has contacted the Director of Public Prosecutions three times since late summer, asking her to reconsider a decision not to charge him in relation to Ms Du Plantier's death.
Eoin English writes that Mr Bailey's unprecedented request was first made in August, after French authorities decided to charge him in absentia with involuntary manslaughter. The French authorities are also seeking his extradition on foot of a European arrest warrant, to stand trial in Paris. Ian Bailey said he approached the DPP in a bid to clear his name.
Central Bank
The Examiner leads on its front page with the governor of the Central Bank's attendance at the Oireachtas finance committee yesterday. Philip Lane said that up to 15,000 mortgage holders were wrongly moved off tracker loans.
However, the paper says it understands that the number of cases of overcharging is likely to exceed 15,000, and could cost the lenders over 500 million euro in redress, compensation and fines.
Newgrange
On the shortest day of the year the Times brings disappointing news for those who queued to see the dawn's early light enter the chamber at Newgrange.
Lorna Siggins reports that a former state archaeologist has said that the famous roof box there has not a shred of authenticity and is a "50-year-old construct". The roof box is central to the theory that our Stone Age ancestors designed the passage tomb to capture the rising sun on the winter solstice, she writes. Michael Gibbons argues that the real significance of Newgrange is as an Iron Age "Hiberno-Roman cult site".
