LAST UPDATE | 15 Feb 2022

GOOD MORNING.

Here’s all the news that you need to know as you start your day.

1. #SOCIAL MEDIA Our lead story this morning from Gareth MacNamee looks at the social media phenomenon of roving gangs of teenagers in north Dublin who are attacking random youths and posting the footage to social media. Gangs of young people, sometimes numbering in their dozens, have been assaulting random people in the Cabra area since before Christmas.

2. #UKRAINE German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is due in Moscow today in search of a diplomatic solution to avoid a war in Ukraine as the West and Russia signalled tentative hopes of an easing in the tense standoff.

3. #MICA REDRESS A controversial part of the the mica redress scheme agreed last year by the Government may be dropped.

4. #POLICING BILL The Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) will tell an Oireachtas committee today that the new Policing Bill will “create confusion and cause a lack of clarity” for gardaí, blurring the lines of accountability and responsibility.

5. #LOBBYING Cabinet is set to finalise legislation today in a bid to strengthen the regulation of lobbying activity by former Ministers, senior civil servants and special advisers.

6. #CANADA Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has decided to invoke emergency powers to quell protests by demonstrators who have paralysed Ottawa and blocked border crossings in anger over the country’s Covid-19 restrictions, a senior government official said.

7. #USC Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said that the Government would not be abolishing the Universal Social Charge (USC) to help ease pressure on people, despite the rising cost of living.

8. #FORENSICS Scientists have used DNA testing of ivory to uncover the international criminal networks behind the trafficking of the product out of Africa.

9. #BURGLARY A pensioner who was robbed at knifepoint alongside her brother in Cork city on Sunday morning has spoken about the ordeal faced by the elderly siblings.