LAST UPDATE | 2 Jun 2022

GOOD MORNING. 

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

Dublin’s crack problems

1. In our lead story this morning Garreth MacNamee reports on serious anti-social behaviour occurring in Dublin city centre caused by a huge increase in the use of crack cocaine in the capital. 

Use of the drug, which is a powerful stimulant, is the worst it has been for over a decade, according to outreach workers as well as local business owners. 

Oklahoma shooting

2. At least four people have been killed in a shooting at a medical building in Oklahoma in a scene which police called “catastrophic”.

Tulsa Police Department deputy chief Eric Dalgleish confirmed the number of dead and said the gunman also was dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Hollywood libel trial

3. A jury has decided that actress Amber Heard made defamatory claims of abuse against her ex-husband Johnny Depp and awarded him $15 million in damages.

The seven-member jury in Virginia found that a 2018 article penned by Heard on the “sexual violence” she had suffered was defamatory to Depp, and was written with malicious intent, making her guilty of libel. 

Denmark’s defence vote

4. An overwhelming majority of Danes, almost 67%, have voted in favour of joining the EU’s common defence policy 30 years after opting out.

The vote comes on the heels of neighbouring Finland and Sweden’s historic applications for Nato membership, as the war in Ukraine forces countries in Europe to rethink their security policy.

Pandemic bonus

5. The health service says it is still attempting to identify workers who are eligible for the €1,000 pandemic bonus despite being asked to begin making the payment in April.

Representative groups and the Minister for Health have raised concerns about the slow rollout of the tax-free bonus, details of which were announced last month.

Ukraine latest

6. Between 60 and 100 Ukrainian soldiers are dying on the battlefield every day, and another 500 wounded, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.

“The situation in the east is very difficult,” Zelenskyy told US newsgroup Newsmax.

“We are losing 60 to 100 soldiers per day, killed in action, and around 500 people wounded in action,” said the 44-year-old leader, speaking through an interpreter.

Mortgage portfolio

7. Ulster Bank has announced that it will sell a €6 billion portfolio of tracker and linked mortgages to AIB as it prepares to exit the Irish market.

Current customers of Ulster Bank will be contacted in the coming weeks and months and do not need to take any action now.

Partygate rumbles on

8. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has claimed quitting as Prime Minister over the “miserable” partygate scandal would be irresponsible and denied suggestions he is a “habitual liar”.

He cited “huge pressures” on the economy, the war in Ukraine and his “massive agenda which I was elected to deliver” as his reasons for remaining in post and not seeking to “abandon” ship.

Buffalo shooter charged

9. The white teenager accused of gunning down 10 Black people during a racist rampage at a supermarket in New York state has been charged with domestic terrorism.

Payton Gendron, 18, was also slapped with ten counts of first-degree murder, a filing on the New York state court system website showed.