LAST UPDATE | 1 Nov 2022

GOOD MORNING.

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

Redacted Lives

1. The Journal is launching a new six-part documentary series about mother and baby homes, telling the stories of women and children who passed through the system.

Redacted Lives will follow the experiences of mothers who ended up in institutions because they became pregnant outside marriage, as well as people born into the system.

It gives those women and their children the chance to tell the real story of mother and baby homes, and how the State continues to deny survivors access to information, proper redress and ownership of their true identities.

Blind justice

2. A Noteworthy investigation has revealed that local authorities are still refusing to provide emergency accommodation to members of the Traveller community on ‘dubious grounds’, despite clear direction on the matter from the Minister for Housing last year.

A solicitor with the Traveller Legal Service said Travellers facing homelessness are reporting to him that local authorities are still using criteria to assess their need that have “no basis in law”.

This includes recent reports of Traveller families being told they need to be on the housing list before they can access emergency accommodation.

Polish ambassador

3. The Polish ambassador to Ireland has said that Russian atrocities and war crimes in towns such as Bucha provoked her to consider taking up a gun “to go fight”.

Anna Sochańska has been the diplomatic representative in Ireland for the government of Poland since 2019.

She recently sat down with The Journal to discuss the war in Ukraine and its impact on the Polish people, the Polish community in Ireland and the international dispute between the European Union and her right-wing Government at home.

South Korea tragedy

4. South Korea’s police chief has said that officers had received multiple urgent reports of danger ahead of a deadly crowd crush at a Halloween event but their handling of them was “insufficient”.

An estimated 100,000 people had flocked to the area, but because it was not an “official” event with a designated organiser, neither the police nor local authorities were actively managing the crowd.

Brazilian election

5. Brazil’s outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro has neither conceded defeat nor challenged the results of the country’s closest political contest in more than three decades.

Bolsonaro has not spoken a word to reporters camped outside the official residence or the supporters who regularly gather nearby. Nor has he post on his otherwise prolific social media platforms.

Jobs

6. Consultancy firm EY has announced 900 new jobs across the island of Ireland, bringing its total workforce here to 5,100.

550 of the positions will be for experienced hires while 350 will be filled by new university graduates.

EY has seven offices on the island of Ireland: Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford.

Twitter

7. Elon Musk has hit the ground sprinting after his Twitter takeover, seeking major changes to the platform only days after finalising his controversial $44 billion purchase.

After changing his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit,” Musk reportedly worked over the weekend with software engineers from Tesla to look under the hood of the one-to-many messaging platform, and on planning massive layoffs.

The team has reportedly been attempting to monetise Twitter’s identity verification feature, which gives certain users a prized blue check mark next to their profile.

Harvey Weinstein

8. A woman has testified that Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her in a hotel room during the Toronto Film Festival in 1991, then did it again when she went to confront him in the same hotel during the same festival 17 years later.

On the witness stand at Weinstein’s Los Angeles trial, she said she was a 24-year-old aspiring actor at the 1991 festival and did not know who Weinstein was before she met him at a party.

Bono

9. Bono has recalled his eventful experience of drinking cocktails with Barack Obama at the White House.

The U2 frontman spoke on BBC Radio 2 about his experience of falling asleep in the US president’s official residence.

Bono said: “I’ve fallen asleep in really awkward spots; the lighting desk of Sonic Youth – they mixed around me and couldn’t be nicer. I’ve slept on the street, on car bonnets and indeed I did fall asleep at the White House and they were very, very good about it actually.”