Extra supports
Irish farmers impacted by the ongoing crisis in Ukraine have been allocated €15.8 million in extra supports.
On Wednesday, the European Union (EU) announced €500 million in aid for European farmers facing difficulties due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The announcement of supports comes as farmers continue to struggle with rising costs for food, feed and fuel.
One issue raised by the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) was the rising price of fertilizer, up 127 per cent on last year.
Michael Healy-Rae comments
Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae has defended his use of the term “away with you with the airy fairies” in an exchange with Tánaiste Leo Varadkar in the Dáil on Tuesday.
Responding to an article by Miriam Lord in The Irish Times, in which she wrote “He may have been thoughtless, but Healy-Rae was out of order. He should apologise.”
Mr Healy-Rae said that in his opinion “she got it wrong”.
When asked on RTÉ radio’s Liveline if would apologise for what he had said, the Independent TD responded “I can’t apologise when there is nothing to apologise for.”
Fatal shooting
A man is due to appear in court over the fatal shooting of Sandra Boyd.
Sandra Boyd (36), a mother of five, was fatally shot at her family home on Saturday in Finglas, Co Dublin.
A man, aged in his 20s, was arrested by Gardaí in connection with the shooting on Monday and was later charged.
Ashling Murphy trial
A man charged with the murder of Ashling Murphy has been remanded in continuing custody pending preparation of the book of evidence for his trial.
Jozef Puska (31), with an address at Lynally Grove, Mucklagh, Co Offaly, was initially held following a hearing on January 19th.
He is accused of killing the 23-year-old primary school teacher, who was attacked after she went for a run along the Grand Canal near Tullamore on January 12th.
The Slovakian national faced his sixth hearing at Cloverhill District Court on Wednesday. Mr Puska appeared before Judge Victor Blake via video link.
China plane crash
Investigators have found what they believe to be the cockpit voice recorder in the wreckage of a China Eastern flight that crashed in the country’s south with 132 people on board, a Chinese aviation official said.
The outer casing of one of the two “black boxes” aboard the plane and its storage component both suffered damage, but the unit is “relatively intact”, Zhu Tao, director of the Office of Aviation Safety at the Civil Aviation Authority of China, told reporters at a briefing.
The recorder will be sent to Beijing for decoding and analysis, he said. How long that will take depends on the degree of damage the unit suffered, he added.
