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

IRELAND

Design & Crafts Council Ireland launches Made Local 2025, a campaign promoting the originality and quality of Irish designed and made products. For more information visit madelocal.ie Leon Farrell / Photocall Ireland Leon Farrell / Photocall Ireland / Photocall Ireland

• Here are the key points from Budget 2026.
• It included a “permanent” €500 cut to third-level student fees and an increase in the cost of fuel and cigarettes.
• Members of the Opposition and a housing charity pulled up the Government after its senior ministers never mentioned homelessness in their Budget speeches today.
• The main non-coalition parties also argued Budget 2026 will only serve to make ordinary people worse off.
• An infant boy died following a fatal road traffic incident at a housing estate in Dublin.
• Elsewhere, a woman in her 80s died following a road traffic incident in Co Cavan earlier today.
• Mark, Louisde and Evan O’Connor were remembered at a tearful funeral mass in Dundalk today as “a family loved by all”. 
• Independent Ireland TDs strongly suggested they will back Catherine Connolly in the upcoming presidential election.
• Minister Jack Chambers shed further light on the timeline surrounding the circumstances that led to Jim Gavin’s withdrawal from the presidential election.
• The families of the ten people killed in the Creeslough tragedy called for a public inquiry on the third anniversary of the explosion.
• The UK’s Director of prosecutions is to appeal against a judge’s decision to throw out the case against Kneecap rapper Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh.
• Three of the 15 Irish citizens detained by Israel after the interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla returned home last night, describing the conditions of their detention as “appalling.“
• When Jozef Puska’s partner withheld information from gardaí about the murder of schoolteacher Ashling Murphy, her life had “imploded” as the man she believed to be a loving partner and devoted father was revealed to be a killer, her barrister told the Central Criminal Court while asking to spare her jail.
• Flights between Dublin and Derry could resume next year, having been withdrawn in 2011.

INTERNATIONAL

The parents of Shiran Slavin visit the site of the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Reim to mark second anniversary of 7 October attacks Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

#7 OCTOBER: Thousands of people converged on southern Israel to mourn the dead as the nation marked two years since the 7 October Hamas attack.
#GAZA: Hamas and Israeli officials resumed talks at an Egyptian resort on a US-drafted peace plan to end the ruinous war in Gaza on the eve of its second anniversary.
#GERMANY: The newly elected mayor of a town in western Germany was found at her apartment today with serious stab wounds, German media reported.
#CALIFORNIA: Three people were left in critical condition after a medical helicopter crashed onto a California motorway.

PARTING SHOT

The McDonald's Hamburglar making a comeback in a 2021 Thanksgiving Day Parade. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Why have politicians been talking about McDonald’s all day?

“A Budget for burger barons and big builders” was how Ged Nash described the Budget announced by the two money ministers. 

The Labour TD was far from the only politician today to run with the burger analogy but he certainly supersized it. 

Politicians and journalists alike have a job on budget day of trying to explain it all in the simplest terms. Sometimes that involves taking one aspect and framing the budget completely around it. 

Today it was easy, with the big ticket item on the agenda the promised VAT cut for hospitality businesses. 

The change means that the VAT paid by food businesses and hairdressers will fall from 13.5% to 9%.