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

IRELAND

12-year-old Ruth Morris walking through a Christmas bauble in Dún Laoghaire, Dublin. CRollingnews.ie CRollingnews.ie

• The EU approved the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to be put on the market, with Health Minister Stephen Donnelly saying it will be rolled out in Ireland “within the coming days”. 
• There were no new deaths and 727 further cases of Covid-19 confirmed in Ireland. 
• People were urged to revise Christmas plans and stay at home as Ireland is “clearly now in a third wave of this pandemic”. 
• The government announced consular flights and ferry journeys for Irish residents who are stranded in Britain to get home to Ireland.
• Three men were arrested by gardaí targeting suspected rogue traders in Cork city.
• The disruption to international supply lines via Britain will seriously impact last-minute post to and from Ireland to Britain and the rest of Europe, An Post has said.
• It was confirmed that schools in Northern Ireland will reopen after the Christmas break after speculation they would remain closed in January.
• Two gunmen for the Kinahan gang were sentenced in separate cases at the Special Criminal Court.
• An Garda Síochána said it continues to detect breaches of Covid-19 regulations at licensed premises across the country and the first ‘Immediate Closure Order’ was issued over the weekend.
• British Airways arranged a last-minute flight to Dublin from London Heathrow last night after hundreds of passengers were nearly left stranded due to an apparent overbooking of an earlier flight. 

WORLD 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaking today. JOHANNA GERON JOHANNA GERON

#WILLIAM BARR: The US Justice Department unsealed charges against a Libyan bomb expert over the 1988 explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. 

#STRAIN: Cases of Covid-19 involving the new coronavirus variant observed in Britain have been reported in at least three other countries in Europe, the ECDC said. 

#ESSEX TRAGEDY: Members of a million-pound people-smuggling ring could be facing life behind bars for the manslaughter of 39 migrants.

PARTING SHOT 

One the day the first Covid-19 vaccine was approved for the European Union market, a piece published on TheJournal.ie looks at vaccine scepticism and misinformation.

This has been swirling online in Ireland in recent months but has intensified as vaccine candidates near approval – even the Late Late Toy Show was seen as a battleground.  

People on social media were unhappy with a segment of the show where a girl acted out giving a Covid-19 vaccine to one of her toys.

RTÉ said that its complaints office received more than 140 emails from the public about references to Covid-19 on this year’s Toy Show. 

Research by TheJournal.ie found more than 50 public Facebook pages and groups which criticised the Toy Show for the segment, according to social media search engine tool CrowdTangle. These posts have received close to 5,000 likes, shares and comments. 

You can read more in the full piece exploring this topic here.

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