LAST UPDATE | 22 Jul 2025

GOOD MORNING.

Here’s all the news you need to know to start the day.

National Development Plan

1. This morning, The Journal’s political editor Christina Finn reports that the Government will today map out how it plans to spend €200bn on massive infrastructure projects over the next decade. 

The National Development Plan (NDP), which is due to be published after the Cabinet meets this morning, will set out the large-scale infrastructure plans this government and future governments will roll out.

Breonna Taylor

2. In the US, a federal judge yesterday rejected an appeal for leniency by the Justice Department and sentenced an ex-police officer to 33 months in prison for violating the civil rights of a black woman whose 2020 killing fuelled widespread protests.

Brett Hankison, a former Louisville police department detective, was convicted by a jury in Kentucky in November of one count of abusing Breonna Taylor’s civil rights for shots fired during a botched police raid on her home.

Gloves are off

3. Stephen Colbert had an unflinching message for US President Donald Trump in his first broadcast since his “Late Show” was cancelled amid a political firestorm – “the gloves are off.”

Colbert, who addressed the cancellation of his show by a broadcaster that has been widely accused of seeking to curry favour with Trump for business reasons, came out swinging – telling Trump to “go fuck yourself.”

Cork

4. A book of evidence has been served on a man accused of the manslaughter of his 82-year-old grandmother in Carrigaline, Co Cork.

Brian Nnamdi Ogbo (38) of Garrydhu Drive, Kilmoney Road, Carrigaline appeared before Cork District Court yesterday by video link. He is charged unlawfully killing Stella Ejiatu Nnamdi on 25 February 2025 at Garrydhu Drive, Kilmoney Road, contrary to common law.

Gaza

5. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has decried attacks on its staff residence and its main warehouse in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah.

The region is facing escalating Israeli military operations recently, when residents were ordered to leave immediately as it was expanding its rampage.

Costa Rica

6. American actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who played the son in the smash-hit sitcom The Cosby Show, has drowned in Costa Rica, authorities in the country have said.

Warner played the loveable Theo Huxtable for all eight seasons of the show, helmed by disgraced comic actor Bill Cosby.

Mullingar

7. A man branded “a monster” after conviction for the prolonged sexual abuse of his partner’s two young daughters amid threats to kill their mother in Co Westmeath has been jailed for seven years.

The sustained abuse happened regularly between 2006 and 2010, and the victims, now in their 20s, recalled him as a “shadow in the doorway” who started grooming them with so-called games described by Judge Kenneth Connolly as “sinister” and “normalising conduct that was not normal”.

Peace talks

8. Russia and Ukraine will hold new peace talks in Turkey tomorrow as a follow-up to two rounds in Istanbul that made little progress on ending their war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced.

While US President Donald Trump has increased the pressure by giving Russia 50 days to agree on a deal or face sanctions, Zelenskyy spoke only hours after the Kremlin had downplayed hopes for a breakthrough.

Gaza

9. The Secretary-General of the United Nations has said that the ‘last lifelines’ keeping people alive in Gaza are collapsing. 

In a strongly worded statement, António Guterres condemned the ‘accelerating breakdown of humanitarian conditions’ in Gaza and the repeated killing of people trying to get aid.