LAST UPDATE | 14 Aug 2020

EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you all the news you need to know as you start the day.

1. #COVID-19: Sole traders who were unable to collect the government’s Restart Grant Plus Scheme for SMEs are to be given a grant of up to €1,000 to get their businesses back on track.

2. #MEAT FACTORIES: An asylum seeker who works at a meat plant in the east of the country has claimed that workers living in Direct Provision have had their hours cut following the Covid-19 clusters in similar plants in Kildare, Offaly and Laois.

3. #NEW ZEALAND: New Zealand has extended a lockdown of its largest city Auckland by at least 12 days, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today, as authorities struggle with a growing new coronavirus outbreak.

4. #DENTISTS: Dentists who have introduced extra Covid-19 charges for clients have been urged to display these extra charges as per the Dental Council’s rules.

5. #TRUMP: US President Donald Trump said he has heard “very serious” rumours about Kamala Harris’s eligibility to serve as vice president while others have dismissed them as a “racist trope”. Trump told reporters he had “heard” suggestions that Harris was born to immigrant parents and could not serve in the White House.

6. #BEIRUT: Lebanon’s government has approved a two-week state of emergency in Beirut, declared after last week’s gigantic portside explosion, giving the army greater powers to suppress resurgent protests.

7. #GALWAY: A man in his 20s was stabbed in Eyre Square in Galway last night. His injuries are not believed to be life-threatening. A man in his 40s was arrested nearby. 

8. #UK: People arriving in the UK from France after 4am tomorrow will be required to spend 14 days in self-isolation due to rising numbers of coronavirus cases in the country. The conditions will also apply to travellers returning to the UK from the Netherlands, Monaco, Malta, Turks & Caicos and Aruba.

9. #BELARUS: Tens of thousands of Belarusians staged a wave of peaceful protests yesterday against President Alexander Lukashenko’s disputed re-election and an ensuing brutal police crackdown.