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

IRELAND

• Paramedics across the country are to be sent ballot papers as they are to vote on potential industrial strike action.  This comes as off-duty paramedics are being asked to return from leave due to the current crisis within the health system, The Journal has learned. 

• Seven people in Lebanon have been charged for participating in the attack that killed United Nations peacekeeper Private Sean Rooney last month. Only one of the seven charged is in custody. 

• Tents are back in use to house asylum seekers, with 88 people having been placed at a settlement in Co Clare.  The accommodation was described as “inhumane” last month. 

• Ambulances in the Midwest will be able to bring patients “directly” to Ennis Hospital instead of them waiting on a trolley at University Hospital Limerick as part of plans to ease record breaking overcrowding at UHL’s emergency department.

• Wheelchair users have complained that the newly-refurbished Dún Laoghaire Baths in Dublin is not accessible, with the temporary ramps on the lower level condemned as too steep. The refurbishment came at a cost of €18 million. 

• Enoch Burke appeared at the school he was where he is employed today, in defiance of a court order. 

• Police in Northern Ireland believe they have recovered the weapon used to murder Natalie McNally in her Co Armagh home, a senior PSNI detective has said. He implored anyone who knows of the perpetrator’s whereabouts to come forward. 

• Online gambling among young males in Ireland quadruples between the ages of 17/18 and 20, according to a new study.

INTERNATIONAL

#VATICAN: Pope Francis today led the funeral of his predecessor Benedict XVI in front of tens of thousands of mourners in St Peter’s Square. 

#CONGRESS: The US House of Representatives has been plunged deeper into crisis today as Republican favorite Kevin McCarthy failed again to win the speakership – entrenching a three-day standoff.

#UKRAINE: Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a 36-hour ceasefire in Ukraine to run during Orthodox Christmas, a move that war-battered Kyiv swiftly branded as “hypocrisy”.

#CLIMATE CHANGE: More than 3/4 of Earth’s glaciers may be gone by the end of the century if investment in fossil fuels continues and global temperatures rise by 4C, scientists have warned. In the best case scenario, around half of the planets glaciers will disappear. 

PARTING SHOT

2022 has been confirmed as Ireland’s hottest year on record by Met Éireann. 

The all-time highest maximum temperature records for July and August were broken in 2022; at Phoenix Park on 18 July (33.0°C, which is 12.9°C above its 1981-2010 long-term average (LTA)) and Durrow, Co Laois on 13 August (32.1°C).

The 18 July recording at Phoenix Park was also the country’s second highest temperature ever recorded in Ireland since 1887.

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