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

IRELAND

Image of a squirrel resting on a tree branch in the National Botanic Gardens this morning. Rollingnews.ie Rollingnews.ie

• 10 additional deaths and 646 new Covid-19 cases were confirmed in Ireland.
• Professor Philip Nolan said Ireland is in a “very precarious position” and urged the public to continue adhering to restrictions as the vaccine rollout continues. 
• The National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) said no change is currently warranted in relation to recommendations around the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. 
• The ESRI warned that risky social interactions by “hundreds of thousands of individuals” is likely to be contributing to the current plateau in the number of Covid-19 cases being reported in Ireland.
• A garda probe was launched into the Fastway cyber attack which targeted the personal details of more than 400,000 parcel deliveries.
• The passport office is ready to begin issuing more passports to applicants after expanding the criteria for what is a reasonable excuse to travel during the period of Level 5 restrictions. 
• Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill refused to welcome Boris Johnson during his visit to NI after he declined a political meeting with Sinn Féin.
• Gardaí said the skeletal remains found in Drogheda during the search for the body of a murdered teenage boy have been sent for testing.
• The getaway driver in a bid by an organised crime gang to murder Lee Boylan in west Dublin was jailed for ten years.

INTERNATIONAL

A person walking in Glasgow today. PA PA

#LONDON: The Metropolitan Police confirmed that a body found in Kent is that of Sarah Everard. 

#GEORGE FLOYD: The city of Minneapolis agreed to pay $27 million (€22.6 million) to settle a civil lawsuit from George Floyd’s family over the black man’s death in police custody. 

#JASON CORBETT: The North Carolina Supreme Court granted a full retrial to Molly Martens and her father Tom who were convicted of the murder of Jason Corbett. 

PARTING SHOT 

The Taoiseach speaking to the nation from Washington on 12 March 2020. PA PA

Believe it or not, it’s been a year since then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar first took to a podium to speak to the nation about the coronavirus.

Last June, TheJournal.ie interviewed dozens of people about their experience of 12 March 2020 to tell the story of that day.

Whether you were scrambling for toilet roll, or panicking about hand sanitisier, that day will stay with most of us for some time to come. 

You can read the piece here. Here’s a sample from the Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan speaking about this day.

I knew, okay, I knew we’re in trouble here. There’s something happening here that’s different and we need to take stock of it … I said, we need a meeting, we can’t sit on this. We need a meeting of the NPHET.

 Looking back on it now it was an unprecedented set of measures, like, we’ve never done anything like this as a country before. Shut all the schools, the universities, and a range of other recommendations.

I absolutely felt the burden of those decisions, I really did feel that. Like, you look at them in retrospect, in comparison to all the measures we ended up taking – you might sort of say, ‘ah sure, that was the easy bit’. You know, that’s how it might feel in retrospect, but it didn’t feel easy then.