Page 12 - John Downing News Today

The EU’s €691m in aid to Palestine has become another casualty of the latest Middle East conflict.

If you are lucky enough to be in Paris for tonight’s epic rugby clash with our Celtic cousins from Scotland, we can only thinly veil our envy by saying we hope those French bedbugs are kind to you. But we will also try to keep the levity stakes low as we broach this most sensitive topic.

The West has begun to look rather wobbly on support for Ukraine’s war. Ireland may need some old-style Jesuits to puzzle out whether Irish rifle training for Ukrainian soldiers amounts to “lethal aid” threatening neutrality.

US lawmakers have sacked House speaker Kevin McCarthy, their third most powerful government leader, sparking political deadlock and chaos.

I probably would remember nothing at all about the referendum which gave the nation the Court of Appeal, bringing on another layer of judges and legal eagles, without some wag’s ironic posting on social media at the time. This alleged that posters were appearing all across leafy south Dublin, where there are more lawyers per square inch than anywhere else in Ireland, urging voters to: “Say ‘Yes’ to the Court of Appeal and Job Creation.”

As bars go, this one was not a place you would choose to go on the spree as it sold more coffee and tea than alcohol. Yet for all that, it was still a public house, so the sight of the late Ian Paisley sitting quietly in a corner, albeit with an outsize pot of tea and focused on a well-thumbed Bible, was strangely disquieting.

One of the haunting images that lingers with me from a decade of reporting from Brussels is that of two beautiful young girls, Julie and Melissa. The pair had gone missing and their distraught parents used some very imaginative methods to let everyone in Belgium, and beyond, see their photos.

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has been asked by the Government to examine whether laws that criminalise the intimidation and obstruction of politicians carrying out their work are being used effectively in the wake of hostile protests outside Leinster House this week.

You could fit that disparate group who caused uproar outside Leinster House into a couple of double-decker buses.

I welcome the Taoiseach’s public apology to Dr Tony Holohan, long overdue for a man and his family who sacrificed much for our country. We forget so easily.