LAST UPDATE | 4 Sep 2023
GOOD MORNING.
Here’s all the news you need to know as you start your day.
1. Some €5.7 billion in harmful fossil fuels and agribusiness is funnelled through Ireland to the Global South, according to a new report.
The money is made up of shares in bonds and shares in climate-harming activities in the Global South.
2. Tánaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin will begin a five-day visit today to Israel, Palestine and Jordan today to discuss the political, security and human rights situation in the region.
Martin will meet senior politicians in all three locations, as well as with UN and civil society representatives who are supporting people in the region.
3.A panel of three academics who scrutinised the climate promises made by the government at the start of its term and compared them to current actions has given the Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil/Green Party coalition a C+ for 2023.
It’s a slight increase from last year’s C, representing cause for “hope” but not “celebration”, the new report has stated.
4.Detectives investigating a poster, which claimed to link three people to the PSNI and was posted on a bus shelter in Derry, have arrested two men.
The pair, aged 38 and 58, have been held on “suspicion of possession for terrorist purposes and other related offences”, police said.
The poster appeared in Dungiven on Thursday.
5.Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has dismissed his defence minister Oleksii Reznikov.
In his nightly address, Zelenskyy said he believes “that the Ministry needs new approaches and different formats of interaction both with the military and with society”.
Rustem Umerov will replace Reznikov.
6. The Green Party’s housing spokesperson has defended the government’s decision not to reinstate the eviction ban, arguing that keeping it would be akin to having “a communist state”.
Francis Noel Duffy voted against going into coalition because he felt the Greens wouldn’t get the influence they wanted on housing.
However, he said he has been “shocked and surprised” to find how well he has worked with Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien and added that he is pleased with what the Greens have been able to achieve in housing so far.
7. A motion to give the Irish government a consultative role in the Stormont budget has been tabled in the UK parliament today by the Social Democratic and Labour Party.
If accepted, the motion, tabled as an amendment to the Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill, will mandate the UK government to engage with their Dublin counterparts on financial settlements in the north.
The party said the aim is enhance cooperation between the British and Irish governments, as well as to prevent a “stealth return” to direct rule.
8.Ireland’s consumer protection watchdog has expressed concerns after it found that an increased number of people are planning to retire relying on cash savings, rather than investing in a pension.
A survey carried out by the watchdog found that 1 in 10 people between the ages of 45 and 64 do not have a pension, and pension ownership amongst 45-54 now stands at 76%, compared to 85% in 2022.
9. Senator and former army captain Tom Clonan writes today that Ukraine’s counteroffensive has been “painfully slow”, due to the small amount of ground regained at a heavy human cost.
Clonan writes: “The Ukrainian military has been forced to mount these assaults with little or no air cover and is vulnerable to Russian counter-battery fire and drone and airstrikes on their troops in the open.”
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