GOOD MORNING. 

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

Stormont Assembly to return

1. Powersharing in Northern Ireland is to return after the DUP announced that it has agreed to UK government proposals on changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol. 

Safe countries

2. Minister for Justice Helen McEntee is to bring a memo to Cabinet today on increasing the number of states on the so-called “safe countries” list. Botswana and Algeria are to be added to the list. 

St Patrick’s Day

3. Cabinet is expected to sign off today on the list of St Patrick’s day visits for ministers across the globe. It is tradition for ministers and ministers of state to travel to different places around the world to mark St Patrick’s Day.

Electricity cables

4. The routes for the placement of three high-voltage underground cable circuits in Dublin have been announced by EirGrid.

West Bank 

5. Undercover Israeli troops raided a West Bank hospital and shot dead three Palestinians early this morning, the Palestinian health ministry said, while the army said the three belonged to a Hamas “terrorist cell”.

Parking

6. If you’ve found parking your car is getting harder, you’re not imagining it. New cars in Ireland grew 2.4cm wider in five years, with some of the most popular models now so large they have just a few centimetres to spare in many parking spaces.

Pakistan ex-PM sentenced to jail

7. Former Pakistan Prime minister Imran Khan has been sentenced to 10 years in jail, state media and a spokesman for his party said, in a controversial case related to a leaked document.

Ukraine aid 

8. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that Ukraine’s gains over two years of fighting are in doubt without new US funding, as Nato’s chief visited to lobby Congress. Tens of billions of dollars in US aid has been sent to Ukraine , but Republican lawmakers have grown reluctant to keep supporting Kyiv.

Anti-Immigration

9. Over the next two years, Irish citizens will cast their votes on at least four different occasions as the country goes to the polls for local, European, national and presidential elections.

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