Limerick feud
Gardaí have arrested four men in an investigation into a violent feud between rival families in Kilmallock, Co Limerick.
The four males were arrested on Monday morning in a planned Garda operation, in the Kilmallock area.
The four suspects are being questioned by gardaí on suspicion of being involved in a series of violent clashes in the town last month.
Back to the office
Boris Johnson has said young people should get back to the office to stop their colleagues gossiping about them.
The British prime minister has urged people to return to the office and stop the practice of working from home that was widespread during the height of the Covid pandemic to halt the spread of the disease.
However, speaking to radio station LBC, Mr Johnson admitted he had not yet managed to get all his staff back into the office full time.
Post-mortem
A man has died following an assault at a house in Blanchardstown on Monday afternoon.
Three people were hospitalised following the incident, which occurred at about 4pm at Ashfield Park.
A man, aged in his 40s, was taken to James Connolly Memorial Hospital, where he has since been pronounced dead, according to gardaí. A post-mortem examination is now being carried out.
A second man and a woman, both in their 20s, were taken to the Mater hospital to be treated for serious injuries.
Facebook outage
Facebook Inc blamed a "faulty configuration change" for a nearly six-hour outage on Monday that prevented the company's 3.5 billion users from accessing its social media and messaging services such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.
The platforms had confirmed on Twitter they were aware of issues and working to resolve them after thousands of people reported outages shortly before 5pm on Monday.
Users were eventually able to access Facebook and Instagram from late on Monday evening, while WhatsApp said its services were “back and running at 100 per cent” as of 3.30am on Tuesday.
Delta variant
There is some evidence that the Delta variant of the coronavirus “may be as bad as it's going to get,” according to Professor Luke O’Neill.
On Tuesday morning, the immunologist said there is “some hope Delta may be the last throw of the dice for the virus”.
Prof O'Neill also suggested that Covid-19 vaccines may ultimately require three shots to ensure people are fully protected for the long term.
Securing a home
Focus Ireland helped a record number of 1,829 households to avoid homelessness or find a secure home, according to the charity's annual report for 2020.
Over 1,359 households were supported to settle into a new home or assisted on a pathway towards sustaining an exit out of homelessness and a further 470 households were supported in keeping their homes.
The charity also ensured 880 families were supported out of homelessness and nearly 3,300 children were supported across our services.
Domestic violence report
A new report from the national Crime Victims Helpline (CVH) has detailed an increase in contacts in 2020 compared to 2019.
The helpline has reported that domestic-violence related contacts increased significantly by 135 per cent compared to the previous year.
Michele Puckhaber, Executive Director of CVH, said the increase was no surprise.
“The significant negative impact Covid restrictions had on people living with domestic violence has been well documented by domestic violence charities,” Ms Puckhaber said.
