NEED TO CATCH up? The Journal brings you a round-up of today’s news.

IRELAND

People today taking part in the annual GOAL Mile run in Herbert Park in Dublin. Sasko Lazarov / Photocall Ireland Sasko Lazarov / Photocall Ireland / Photocall Ireland

• 10,404 new Covid-19 cases were confirmed in Ireland.
• Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan urged people to reduce their contacts, advising not to socialise or meet indoors with other households and to avoid crowded places.
• A man was charged with murder following the death of a woman in her 40s in Wicklow on Friday.
• Wexford County Council said residents in one village saw flood levels rise to more than one metre in their homes yesterday after the banks of a canal burst. 
• New data shows the iconic hen harrier remains under threat from forestry and predators in nature zones designated for its protection.
• A Status Yellow fog warning was issued for 12 counties from tonight into tomorrow morning with patches of “dense fog” expected.
• The Taoiseach said that revolutionary leader Michael Collins should be commemorated as a statesman to mark the centenary of his death next year.
• ‘Atrocious’ forecasts, a ‘terrible’ app and Dublin bias were among the issues raised among hundreds of complaints sent to Met Éireann this year. 

WORLD

File image of Desmond Tutu with then-Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in 1998. RollingNews.ie RollingNews.ie

#SOUTH AFRICA: Tributes were paid to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu following his death aged 90.

#LIBYA: The bodies of 28 people washed up on Libya’s western coast after a migrant boat sunk, a security official said. 

PARTING SHOT

Archbishop Desmond Tutu died today at the age of 90. Alongside his many achievements and memorable moments, one of his several ties to Ireland has been remembered today. 

In 1984, Dunnes Stores workers began a strike that would last almost three years when shop steward Karen Gearon gave a union instruction to her colleagues not to handle any South African goods, in protest against the apartheid regime in the country at the time.

When 21-year-old cashier Mary Manning refused to put some fruit through the till, she was suspended and nine of her colleagues walked out the door with her.

Tutu asked to meet with these strikers as he travelled to collect his Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

Mary Manning and Karen Gearon travelled to London Heathrow to meet him. 

Manning told the Irish Examiner today: ”He walked into the room and just walked over and hugged the two of us. I wasn’t expecting that at all.”

Gearon told the newspaper that Tutu was “just a lovely man and very funny and witty”. 

President Michael D Higgins said Tutu’s death “will be felt by all those in Ireland who made themselves part of the anti-Apartheid movement”, including the Dunnes Stores workers involved in the 1980s strike. 

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