LAST UPDATE | 19 Apr 2022

WELL HELLO ALL. Happy Tuesday.

The first in-person teachers-union conferences will take place later today, with Education Minister Norma Foley due to address the ASTI and INTO. There will also be a renewed focus on Ukraine as an offensive in the Donbas region gets underway.

Here’s what’s happening in the world today.

1. Ukraine

Russia has launched its long-feared, full-scale offensive to take control of Ukraine’s east, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

2. A first-hand account

Over 50 days in, things have changed at the main border crossing between Poland and Ukraine, our reporter Céimin Burke reports from the Polish-Ukrainian border.

We’re used to seeing women and children – often accompanied by pets – stream across the border from Ukraine, bringing with them as much as they can carry, Burke writes.

What’s different now though, is that there are as many – or almost as many – people going back, crossing the border in the other direction to return to their homes in Ukraine.

3. Coveney addresses UN Security Council

Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney will address the UN Security Council following his visit to war-torn Ukraine. Coveney had visited Kyiv and Bucha last week – making him the first foreign minister from a state on the Security Council to visit the Ukrainian capital since the start of the war.

3. Republican parade in Derry

The PSNI has said that its officers had come under attack yesterday, after a republican parade was held in Derry to commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising.

4. Cloned Insta accounts

An Internet monitoring website overseen by the Department of Justice has warned of an “emerging trend” of intimate image abuse from scam accounts on Instagram. Hotline.ie has warned of an increase in what they call ‘cloned Instagram accounts’ – in which scammers will impersonate real women and post links to porn claiming to be of them.

5. Fatal Donegal crash

A man aged in his 20s has died after a collision between a motorcycle and a car in Co Donegal. Gardaí are appealing for witnesses.

6. Carers

The Irish Independent reports that parents will be allowed up to five days off work to care for sick children under new legislation being brought to Cabinet.

7. Riots in Sweden 

Swedish police have said the riots that have shaken several cities and towns in the Nordic country are extremely serious crimes against society and suspect some protesters are linked to criminal gangs that intentionally target police.

8. Cristiano Ronaldo

Football star Cristiano Ronaldo and his partner Georgina Rodriguez have announced that their baby son has died. It comes after the couple announced in October that they were expecting twins. ”Only the birth of our baby girl gives us the strength to live this moment,” a statement said.