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LAST UPDATE | 18 May 2023
GOOD MORNING.
Here’s all the news that you need to know as you start your day.
1. A 17-year-old has been hospitalised with serious head injuries in an assault in Dublin.
Gardaí said he was attacked by “a group of males” on La Touche Road in Bluebell yesterday evening.
2. As Stormont remains in a deadlock, weary voters are heading to the polls in the first local elections since 2019.
The election is likely to see the Sinn Fein become the biggest party at local government level, and the Alliance party emerge as the third biggest.
One hopeful candidate, John Hyland from Liverpool, who moved to the Ballymena area in the last few years, speaks about his experience on the doorsteps: “One woman asked me ‘Are you the gay fella?’ when she opened the door, but she ended up saying ‘Good for you, we need that here’.”
3. Minister Roderic O’ Gorman has confirmed that three new accommodation centres for asylum seekers are to open in Dublin, as the Government has been scrambling to house international protection applicants sleeping rough.
The centres will located at the Airways Industrial Estate in Santry, the former Senior College on Eblana Avenue in Dún Laoghaire, and Dolcain House in Clondalkin.
4. The Tánaiste is expected to confirm that Ireland is seeking greater co-operation with NATO later today, while also questioning whether the country’s current security and neutrality arrangements are fit for purpose in 2023.
5. Ukraine said “unprecedented” air attacks had rocked its capital and other areas early this morning, a day after it reached an agreement with Russia to extend a deal allowing grain exports across the Black Sea.
In the port city of Odessa, one person was killed and two were wounded after a missile hit industrial infrastructure, the military said.
6. British music retailer HMV is set to open its first store in Ireland since it closed its’ doors almost seven years ago.
It’s five remaining stores in Ireland closed in 2016 after the company entered administration.
7. A group that has been protesting the housing of refugees in Co Clare, has said it is “disappointed and let down” by Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman’s response to their objections.
8. Almost half of the obese adolescents given a new treatment lost enough weight to drop below the clinical cut-off for obesity, new research presented in Dublin has found.
9. Five Germans went on trial today over a far-right plot to kidnap the country’s health minister and overthrow the government in protest against Covid-19 restrictions.
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It’s pretty bad alright. I’ve been in monsoon rains in Asia, and it was nothing compared to the rain I experienced on the NSW south coast today. I’ve used the phrase “bucketing down” all my life, but today was the first time I’ve used it accurately without exaggeration. It was like thousands of buckets of water were just being poured from the sky, relentlessly for about an hour. Then it just went back to heavy rain. Then it bucketed again for another hour or so, and when it did, you literally couldn’t see a meter outside your window.
Due to get worse tomorrow and then reduce to heavy rain for the next 10 days or so. But with everything else that’s happening in the world, I count my chickens that we are in a safely high area, and not a flood plane or a war zone.
@Jonathan Nolan: As you know its come down from Brisbane .. and you’re right, never seen rain like it. 250mm each day for 3 days solid. Some places had over a metre in that time. Had we had one more day I’d be cleaning out my own flooded house right now.
@Pablo: take care Pablo. Let’s hope it calms down or goes off the coast or something. It’s pretty ridiculous the amount of water coming down stay safe
@Jonathan Nolan: Take care, Jonathan. Melbourne is unusually humid but dry for now. Time to get a federal government that takes climate change seriously, that spends our taxes where it is needed, rather than on their mate.
@A Well Known Comical Stereotype AKA PRGuy: your not wrong.
@A Well Known Comical Stereotype AKA PRGuy: yeah it’s been lovely in Melbourne the last few weeks. The rain up there looks crazy. I heard that in one hour somewhere in Queensland they had more than Melbourne’s entire annual rainfall!
Hope you stay safe and dry there and can help others out. A metre of rain sounds destructive, especially on baked-dry land.
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