LAST UPDATE | 13 Aug 2021

GOOD MORNING.

Here’s all the news that you need to know about as you start your day.

The Monk’s arrest

1. The front page grabbing news this morning is that Spanish police have arrested Gerry “The Monk” Hutch on foot of a European Arrest Warrant in connection with the Regency Hotel shooting. 

Gardaí had sought the warrant as part of their investigation into those who allegedly organised the incident at the Dublin hotel in which David Byrne was murdered in February, 2016. 

Niall O’Connor reports that Hutch was arrested in an operation by Spanish authorities in the Costa del Sol area.

Clamping blackspot

2. Dublin has a new clamping blackspot as traffic patterns changed amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Clarendon Street, close to Grafton Street in the city centre, saw the highest number of vehicles clamped during 2020, with 809 found illegally parked over the course of the year.

Stephen McDermott reports that the number of vehicles clamped in Dublin city fell by almost a quarter last year.

Back to school

3. Pregnant teachers and special needs assistants fear going back to school before they’re vaccinated against Covid-19, with some considering taking unpaid sick leave.

In Ireland, pregnant people can’t register to get the Covid-19 vaccine until they are at least 14 weeks’ pregnant.

The HSE recommends waiting until this time as a precaution “to avoid any possible association with a miscarriage”.

UK shooting

4. Six people have died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident in Plymouth, UK.

Two females and two males died at the scene in the Keyham area of the city, along with another male who is believed to be the offender.

Another female was treated at the scene for gunshot wounds and later died in hospital.

Police said it is not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident. It confirmed the incident was not terror-related.

Afghanistan

5. Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban has accelerated as the Islamist movement captured the country’s second largest city, Kandahar, in a significant blow for the government.

Kandahar was once the Taliban’s stronghold, and is a strategically important trade hub.

The Pentagon said earlier that it is to deploy around 3,000 troops to Afghanistan immediately to evacuate US embassy employees securely.

Security analyst Tom Clonan writes in The Journal today that the group’s impending victory in Afghanistan is bad news for humanity.

Homeless charity

6. A Dublin homeless charity has suspended one of its employees and has appointed a senior counsel to examine “serious matters” which the board have been made aware of.

The board of Inner City Helping Homeless (ICHH) said that in recent days “serious matters have come to the attention of the board”. 

“We immediately initiated an investigation and commenced an independent process which we expect recommendations from shortly,” the charity’s chairperson David Hall said. 

Coronavirus origins

7. China today rejected the World Health Organisation’s calls for a renewed probe into the origins of Covid-19, saying it supported “scientific” over “political” efforts to find out how the virus started.

Pressure is once more mounting on Beijing to consider a fresh probe into the origins of a pandemic which has killed more than four million people and paralysed economies worldwide since it first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

Booster jabs

8. The US has authorised an extra dose of Covid vaccine for people with weakened immune systems, as the country struggles to thwart the Delta variant.

Emergency use authorisation for a third injection of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines was granted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulator.

Free Britney

9. Britney Spears’ father is to step down as conservator of her estate, according to legal documents seen by TMZ and other US media, seemingly ending a bitter legal battle with his daughter.

Britney, 39, last month launched a bid to remove him from the controversial guardianship role that she said amounted to “abuse.”

Jamie Spears’ lawyer said at the time he would fight the move, disputing his daughter’s account.