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

IRELAND

Fianna Fail party leader Michael Martin TD in the Clayton Hotel in Dublin RollingNews.ie RollingNews.ie

• The Programme for Government was passed by members of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party.
• Three more deaths and 11 new cases of Covid-19 were confirmed by the Department of Health.
• Family members of Patricia O’Connor, who helped cover up her murder and dismemberment, received prison sentences totalling eight-and-a-half years.
• Police investigating the disappearance of 14-year-old Noah Donohoe in Belfast have said they’d discovered a number of items he was last seen with.
• The Chief Medical Officer urged the public to avoid travelling abroad amid reports the government would create a ‘green list’ of safe countries next month.
• Bríd Smith defended comments she made about a High Court judge and a Facebook post that used an image of him and claimed he was “right wing”.
• The HSE said its contact tracing app will be wound down within 90 days if it’s deemed to not be effective.
• A new report ranked Ireland as the worst country in western Europe for eliminating human trafficking. 
• Two people were killed in a road traffic collision in Limerick in the early hours of the morning.

INTERNATIONAL

Police stand at the scene in Glasgow, where a man was shot by an armed officer PA PA

#BEACHES: UK health secretary Matt Hancock warned that the government there will take action like close beaches if social distancing measures are ignored, after thousands flocked to the south coast of England yesterday.

#GLASGOW: A suspect was shot dead by police and six other people were hospitalised following a serious incident in Glasgow city centre.

#AUSTRALIA: Supermarkets across Australia imposed purchase limits on toilet paper amid panic buying fuelled by worries over a surge in coronavirus cases.

PARTING SHOT

So four months on, we have a government.

There are those who would call the agreement reached between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party historic. Others would argue that all such agreements are historic, and that this occasion is no more historically significant than others.

Whatever your stance, one Twitter user pointed out something that may have been an indisputably historic moment.

It followed this tweet from Green Party TD Ossian Smyth, sent moments before the results of his party’s very-much-up-in-the-air vote on the programme for government was announced:

Many seemed to think that this signalled the moment when we all knew what was coming, including @aideenblackwood, who seems to have recognised the significance of the tweet:

Now that’s historic.

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