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

IRELAND

Government ministers across three political parties began their first day with their new brief.

• The Department of Health has confirmed that a further one patient diagnosed with Covid-19 has died and there are three new cases of the disease in Ireland.
• Taoiseach Micheál Martin has vowed to place pictures of Michael Collins and Eamon De Valera side by side in his office in Dublin to signal a new era in Irish politics.
• An 18-year-old man has been charged with the murder of 31-year-old Jason Lee Martin in Ballymena in the early hours of Saturday morning. 
• Police in Northern Ireland have described the murder of a 28-year-old man in west Belfast on Saturday as callous and reckless.
• Professor Philip Nolan has urged the public to consider whether travelling abroad is a “luxury or necessity” as the number of Covid-19 cases in Ireland related to travel has increased. 
• Eamon Ryan has said the Green Party’s leadership contest will take place online in the next month now that a government has been formed.
• Met Éireann issued a status orange rainfall warning for three counties in the North West of the country today.
• Traveller activist and now soon-to-be senator Eileen Flynn has described the moment she received a phone call from Taoiseach Micheál Martin informing her that she had been chosen as one of his 11 nominees to the Seanad. 

INTERNATIONAL 

Alex Brandon Alex Brandon

#BLACK LIVES MATTER US President Donald Trump shared a video of a stand-off between anti-Trump protesters and his supporters in which a man chants “white power” – before deleting it amid an outcry. 

#HONG KONG China’s legislature begun reviewing a controversial national security bill for Hong Kong that critics say will severely compromise human rights in the semi-autonomous territory.

#WALMART An armed man has driven into a Walmart distribution centre in California and opened fire, killing one person and injuring four others before being shot dead by police.

Parting Shot

It’s sure been a long week in politics, as the saying goes – and a historic one at that. The government for the duration of the 33rd Dáil, complete with a new set of Cabinet ministers has been announced. 

But on this very day 57 years ago, the most powerful politician in the world at the time – former US president and Irish American John F. Kennedy – addressed Dáil Eireann, suggesting that under different circumstances he may well have been a TD in Leinster House himself.