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

White House

1. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told US President Joe Biden during the St Patrick’s Day shamrock ceremony in the White House that Irish people are “deeply troubled” about the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.

The event in the East Room of the White House marked the end of a week of engagements which involved a bilateral meeting between the two leaders.

Varadkar raised the situation in Gaza in his speech, stating: “The Irish people are deeply troubled about the catastrophe that’s unfolding before our eyes in Gaza.”

Russian President

2. After an election that offered Russians no genuine alternative, Vladimir Putin has been reinstated as the country’s president, securing another six years.

The official election data showed that Putin received around 87% of all votes cast, according to state news agency RIA.

Voting happened under tightly controlled conditions, where Putin was up against only three tokenistic contenders. His critics and any viable would-be opponents are dead, imprisoned, or in exile.

Gaza

3. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to send ground forces into Gaza’s southern Rafah city, despite major international concern over the fate of Palestinian civilians.

Netanyahu said that “no amount of international pressure will stop us from realising all the goals of the war”.

“To do this, we will also operate in Rafah,” he told a cabinet meeting, hours before he was set to meet visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for talks.

Homeless asylum seekers

4. Children and Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman has denied that the decision to move homeless asylum seekers who had been staying in tents in Dublin City Centre to south county Dublin was because of the St Patrick’s Day parade.

About 150 men were bussed from the Mount Street area in Dublin 2 on Saturday morning to a facility in Crooksling, Co Dublin, where they were given tents and told to make a new camp.

The men were met at the scene by anti-immigration demonstrators. Several travelled back to the city the previous evening, not knowing where they would sleep. While they were gone, a private contractor hired by the council cleared away the tents and some of the men’s belongings.  

Emmet Stagg

5. Long-serving former Labour Party TD Emmet Stagg has died at the age of 79 after a long illness.

President Michael D Higgins led the tributes to Stagg, saying he would be remembered “for his generosity and kindness towards all of his colleagues, and indeed for his respect for people in all parties”. 

Stagg served as a TD in the Kildare and Kildare North constituencies for 29 years from 1987 to 2016. 

Vandalised passage tomb

6. The government has been accused of failing to protect one of the country’s most ancient sites months after it was vandalised.

Locals say Carrowkeel passage tombs has been left poorly secured, with pictures from this month showing rusted crash barriers partially covering the entrance to the Co Sligo neolithic site.

Other images show one of the dislodged stones, damaged by vandals in October, sitting completely open to the public. 

MMR vaccine

7. Pharmacists have said they are “primed, resourced and ready” to contribute to the government’s newly announced MMR Catch-up Vaccination Programme in order to stave off an outbreak of measles in Ireland.

Cases of measles are on the rise across Europe and have shown up in Ireland over recent weeks, with the HSE issuing an urgent alert yesterday to passengers who travelled on a flight from Abu Dhabi to Dublin, which was carrying at least one infected person.

With more people bound to travel abroad this spring and summer, one pharmacist told The Journal she fears that many will bring the highly infectious – and dangerous – disease back with them.   

Higher education

8. In an interview for The Journal’s Policy Matters series, Sinn Féin higher education spokesperson Mairéad Farrell detailed problems in the third-level sector and how they should be addressed.

Farrell’s first proposed piece of legislation as the party’s spokesperson for students seeks to regulate ‘digs’ accommodation by strengthening the rights of tenants. 

Dancing With The Stars

9. Sprint runner Jason Smyth was crowned the winner of Dancing With The Stars Ireland on RTÉ last night with his dance partner Karen Byrne.

The seventh series of the dance competition show came to an end last night as the public voted between the final four couples.

Smyth and Byrne performed a Samba to Rhythm Divine by Enrique Iglesias, which scored 28 points from the judges, and a show dance to Go the Distance by Michael Bolton, which scored a perfect 30.