LAST UPDATE | 25 Feb 2023

GOOD MORNING. 

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

Solidarity with Ukraine

1. Tánaiste Micheál Martin told crowds gathered at the GPO to mark the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine yesterday that Ireland is “not politically or morally neutral in the face of war crimes”.

Senior politicians are among the hundreds of people who are attending the event outside the GPO on Dublin’s O’Connell Street.

Those gathered sung the Ukrainian national anthem, followed by a rendition of Amhrán na bhFiann.

Addressing the crowds outside the GPO, Tánaiste Micheál Martin said he was “honoured” to be with Ukraine’s ambassador to Ireland, Larysa Gerasko.

Attempted murder

2. The PSNI has confirmed that it is treating the attempted murder of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell as “terror-related” and that the “primary line of enquiry is the New IRA”.

A fifth man has been arrested this evening in connection with the shooting. 

In an investigation update earlier today, the PSNI’s Assistant Chief Constable for Crime Department Mark McEwan also made a renewed appeal for anyone who was in the area or who witnessed what happened to come forward. 

Biden to seek reelection

3. US first lady Jill Biden has given one of the clearest indications yet that Joe Biden will run for a second term, telling The Associated Press that there is “pretty much” nothing left to do but work out the time and place for the announcement.

Although Biden has long said that it is his intention to seek re-election, he has yet to make it official, and he has struggled to dispel questions about whether he is too old to continue serving as president.

Biden would be 86 at the end of a second term.

Protocol talks

4. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is no longer expected to travel to the UK today to meet British prime Minister Rishi Sunak, UK Government sources have confirmed.

After having “positive” discussions with Sunak today, von der Leyen was expected to arrive in Britain for further in-person talks about the Northern Ireland Protocol.

According to Sky News, the commission leader was also scheduled to meet king Charles at Windsor Castle while in the UK.

US actor harassment

5. An American actor pleaded guilty yesterday to harassment of an Irish doctor almost 20 years after they dated for three weeks when she was a student on a J1 visa.

A bail hearing was told that for nearly two decades, Steven Spenneberg, 55, constantly sent unwanted gifts and messages declaring his love to the woman he had last seen in 2004.

However, they were unanswered, and the attempts at contact “escalated” to a threatening voicemail message and his arrival in Ireland when he turned up at her family home in Co. Cork on New Year’s Eve.

Border collision

6. A man is due before court today after a lorry failed to stop for Gardaí in Co Donegal and crossed over the border where it collided with a PSNI vehicle. 

The driver of the lorry, reportedly stolen from the Donegal area, failed to stop for Gardaí in the Lifford Bridge area of Donegal at around 8.40pm on Thursday evening. 

He then drove off towards Strabane, Co Tyrone. 

Stephen Silver trial

7. A man who is on trial accused of murdering a Garda with his own gun, has denied “inventing” that he believed a woman he was with on the morning of the shooting was in MI6 in order to “bolster” his case.  

Under cross examination from Michael Delaney SC, prosecuting, today, Silver denied he had made up the beliefs that the woman was in MI6, insisting: “No, I had these thoughts”.

Delaney said this was not mentioned in Garda interviews and the accused had, in fact, spoken in “glowing terms” about the woman.  

Earthquake recovery

8. Turkey has said that preliminary work has started to build housing for people left homeless by the massive earthquake that hit parts of the country and neighbouring Syria, killing tens of thousands.

Murat Kurum, the minister for the environment, urbanisation and climate change, said on Twitter yesterday that excavations were taking place in the towns of Nurdagi and Islahiye in Gaziantep province, where the government plans to build an initial 855 homes.

The work comes less than three weeks after the magnitude 7.8 quake struck, killing more than 47,000 people in Turkey and Syria – the vast majority in Turkey.

Jail for homeless attacks

9. A man who slashed two fellow homeless men with a Stanley blade in separate unprovoked and “savage” attacks on the same day has been jailed for five years.

Vincent Brady (34) of no fixed abode in Dublin, told Gardaí he had smoked crystal meth on the day he accosted the two men in separate attacks in Rathmines, Dublin – slashing one man across the face in church grounds and slicing another to the back of the head after pushing him into the canal.

Brady pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to two counts of assault causing harm to his victims at locations in Rathmines on 19 May 2021.