GOOD MORNING.
Here’s all the news that you need to know as you start your day.
Eviction ban
1. In our main story this morning, Tadgh McNally reports that the eviction ban has lapsed today, with demonstrations expected to take place in Dublin later this afternoon in protest.
The protest – organised by the Cost of Living Coalition – is due to take place outside Leinster House calling for the ban to be reintroduced.
Child protection
2. A man allegedly abused by a schoolteacher in Waterford city has said he wants answers for how it took Tusla eight years to respond to a notification about what had happened at the school.
The agency told the man that it had “no worker available” at the time in 2008 to investigate Waterpark College’s formal notification of an allegation of retrospective child abuse, and offered him an apology for the “unacceptable delay” in contacting him.
Cariban
3. Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has said work is ongoing to see how women who suffer from severe sickness during pregnancy can get medication through a GP prescription.
The drug, known as Cariban, was previously unavailable on the drugs payment scheme or medical card.
Mayo
4. Two men have been arrested following the discovery of a suspected grow house in the Killala area of Co Mayo yesterday.
During the course of a search, suspected cannabis plants with an estimated value of €432,800 were seized by gardaí.
Tornadoes
5. In the US, a monster storm system tore through the south and midwest on Friday, spawning deadly tornadoes that shredded homes and shopping centres in Arkansas and collapsed a theatre roof during a heavy metal concert in Illinois.
Authorities said one person had died and 28 more were injured when a theatre roof collapsed during a tornado on Friday night in Belvidere, Illinois.
Cannabis
6. In north Dublin, two men were arrested after gardaí seized €1.36 million worth of cannabis in a joint operation in the Dublin and Meath area targeting persons suspected to be involved in organised crime.
The two men, aged 45 and 39, were arrested are being detained at a garda station in North Dublin.
Seema Banu
7. A man who was arrested for the murder of his wife and two children at their home in south Dublin disguised himself in women’s clothing to take a bus to their house on the day they were last seen alive on 22 October 2020, an inquest has heard.
Evidence also emerged that the accused, Sameer Syed, was in the family home on 29 days in the two months before their deaths in breach of bail conditions imposed after he had physically assaulted his wife, Seema Banu, earlier that year.
Andrew Tate
8. A Romanian court ordered that controversial influencer Andrew Tate and his brother be moved from jail to house arrest yesterday while they are investigated for alleged human trafficking and rape.
Tate, a British-American former kickboxer with millions of online followers, along with his younger brother and two Romanian women, are under investigation for allegedly “forming an organised criminal group, human trafficking and rape”.
Artificial intelligence
9. Italy has temporarily blocked ChatGPT over data privacy concerns, making it the first western country to take such action against the popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.
The country’s Data Protection Authority said US firm OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, had no legal basis to justify “the mass collection and storage of personal data for the purpose of ‘training’ the algorithms underlying the operation of the platform”.
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