Tánaiste Simon Coveney has confirmed that the Government is taking legal advice as to how sanctions may be used against striking nurses, including docking their pay.
Mr Coveney pretends the Government does not want to be at odds with nurses but called on unions to live up to their part of the national pay agreement.
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Violent clashes between the police and yellow vests since the start of the movement have caused many injuries including the loss of eyes and hands and led to claims of police violence. Here are the latest statistics.
Less than three months since it kicked off, the Yellow Vests movement has turned into one of the longest and most violent social protests in modern France.
Hundreds of protestors and police alike have been injured since the start of the protests with claims of police violence over the controversial use of rubber-bullets and stun grenades by French security forces have been gaining ground.
Here’s a look at the numbers.
1,700 people
According to government figures, 1,700 people have been injured and 1,000 policemen or gendarmes have been hurt in the 11 weeks of conflict.
Out of those injured, 100 have been seriously hurt and 11 people have now died. Most of those casualties resulted from road accidents at blockades in the early days of the protest. The
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Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini said on Sunday he was gathering legal evidence against the crew of a Dutch-flagged rescue ship as calls grew for 47 migrants to be allowed to land.
“We have concrete elements to declare that the captain and crew of the Sea Watch 3 have put the lives of those on board at risk by disobeying precise directions days ago to disembark them in the nearest port, not Italy!” he said.
“The evidence will be handed to the judicial authorities,” he said, accusing captain and crew of “a crime and a clear desire to use these immigrants in a political battle”.
Salvini has refused to open the ports to the mainly sub-Saharan African migrants rescued in the Mediterranean over a week ago, saying the ship had had a chance to make port as it sailed through Libyan, Tunisian and Maltese waters.
“The interior minister is gathering elements to evaluate whether to press charges against the entire Sea Watch crew for favouring illegal immigration,” the
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AMERICAN RAPPER Azealia Banks has launched a fresh attack on Ireland, branding Irish people “inbred leprechauns” in a series of explosive Instagram comments.
The 27-year-old made the statements just a day after performing in Dublin in a show the musician dedicated to “all the beautiful Irish women that are here.”
However, within hours of the gig, Banks was once again courting controversy.
Responding to a series of critical remarks posted on her Instagram account, Banks let loose all over again with a series of stinging anti-Irish remarks.
In one instance, she asked an Irish commenter: “Don’t you have a famine to go die in?” while in another Banks branded Irish people “inbred leprechauns who have ZERO global influence.”
The 212 star went on to say she was thankful that Irish people are “quarantined on an isle” later adding that they were “jealous” of her beauty.
These controversial remarks come just days after Banks chose to remove herself from a f
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We can reveal that gardaí in Blanchardstown have built a profile on the leading figures of the gang and have photographs of “dozens” of youths, described as being black teenagers, all of whom they understand to have close ties with one another.
YOB FEARS Schoolboy gangs who are ‘terrorising’ west Dublin locals and targeting taxi drivers being ‘left to run amok’ by gardai.
The teenage thugs, who are moving through Blanchardstown and out to north county Dublin, have been behind a number of vicious assaults, robberies and even threats on the lives of gardai in recent months.
The fearless yobs are “arrested every week” for violent incidents such as assault causing harm, possession of offensive weapons, violent disorder and criminal damage, according to sources.
And politicians in the areas say gardai risk setting off “a mini riot” every time they decide to put their foot down and arrest one of the youths.
Last week two leading members of the crew
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Yesterday (22/01/2018) the leaders of France and Germany met at the small town of Aachen to sign the Franco-German Treaty on Cooperation and Integration.
The mainstream media have been largely silent on this event for two reasons; firstly, they’re aware that it’s unpopular and confirms the fears of Euroskeptics within and without, and; secondly, other European and global issues, depending on where you get your news, have dominated the landscape, conveniently burying what is a great stride towards total European integration.
President Macron and his apparent new political guru, Chancellor Merkel, have declared to the public that this treaty builds on the Elysee Treaty, signed by Chancellor Adenauer and President de Gaulle in 1963. Their words, in public at least, have attempted to frame this as part of the long-term reconciliation process between the two European giants – but in reality, this is nothing of the sort. This treaty, which has been dubbed the Aachen
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A 17-year-old girl was seriously injured in Minden, Germany after a drunk Afghan refugee dragged her off a bus by her hair, causing her to be run over while trying to escape the man.
According to a police statement, the girl was repeatedly harassed by the 22-year-old Afghan refugee while she waited at a bus terminal in Minden, near Hanover, with her 14-year-old friend just before 9pm local time on Saturday.
The girl and her friend sought safety from the man, and his 21-year-old friend, by running to a nearby vehicle, where the driver let them on. However, the persistent pair also got onboard and the 22-year-old dragged the girl from the bus by her hair – after it had started to move.
The girl slipped and fell beneath the bus, which ran over her legs, leaving her with “severe injuries,” police said. As bystanders rushed to help the teen, the driver chased the men hoping to get a picture of them. He was reportedly slapped in the face by the 21-year-old.
Police
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Matteo Salvini, Italy’s opinionated deputy PM, said that he hopes the French people can rid themselves of the “terrible” leadership of President Emmanuel Macron. Salvini’s jibe is the latest salvo in an ongoing feud with Paris.
“I hope that the French will be able to free themselves from a terrible president,” the populist leader said in a Facebook video posted on Tuesday. “The opportunity will come on May 26 [the European Parliament elections] when finally the French people will be able to take back control of its future, destiny, pride, which are poorly represented by a character like Macron.”
While French voters will not be exactly replacing Macron in the upcoming elections, his En Marche! movement is expected to lose ground to right-wing rival Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party. The more nationalists France sends to the European Parliament, the bigger the blow to Macron’s Europhilic ambitions, which include sharing of sovereignty with France’s n
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Rumors spread like wildfire as Derry, Northern Ireland, was hit by three security alerts on Monday. With panic setting in on social media the police are seeking to reassure people that a zombie apocalypse isn’t nigh.
The alerts were sparked after two vans were hijacked by masked men and a third was reported abandoned outside a girls’ secondary school. Numerous people had to evacuate their homes as the cops established security cordons around the vehicles.
A third security alert is underway in Derry tonight. An abandoned ASDA van has been left outside St Mary’s Secondary School blocking the road. Police cordon in place.
Bomb disposal experts also carried out a controlled explosion in one of the vans after the suspects were seen throwing an object in the back of the vehicle before abandoning it.
Meanwhile, one man remains in custody in relation to a car bomb that exploded in the city on Saturday evening. Nobody was injured in the incident.
The city was the sce
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Italian authorities are investigating claims of a 32-year-old Belgian woman who says she was kidnapped by six migrants and forced into sexual slavery for two months.
The 32-year-old claimed to have been kidnapped by the six Tunisian migrants and held from January to February 2017 in the city of Sanremo which lies in the north-west along the Italian Riviera, 7sur7 reports.
Investigators say that the woman, who lives on the Côte d’Azur, approached one of the men involved who offered to sell her drugs on the night of January the 10th. The man took the opportunity to then force the woman to one of the homes of the migrants where she said she was repeatedly raped while being tied to a bed.
A French girl escapes her illegal migrant boyfriend using a knotted bed sheet to climb down from a 9th-floor apartment.
According to the victim, the six men were all from Tunisia and were aged between 23 and 50 years old.
She also described that one of the men would stand guard in
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Berlin might face a lawsuit from one of Germany’s largest defense contractors, Rheinmetall, over its decision to halt all arms deals with Riyadh in the wake of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Der Spiegel reports.
Rheinmetall AG might file a claim for compensation against the federal government worth millions of euro, the company said in a letter to the Ministry of Economics, the German weekly says. The defense industry giant considers itself eligible for restitution as Berlin suspended exports, which were already approved by the German security council, “for political reasons.”
The company also fears that its own shareholders could file lawsuits against it if the management fails to demand compensation for the losses stemming from the halt of arms exports to Saudi Arabia. The exact amount of compensation has not been revealed, though.
Back in October, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced her country would stop supplying weapons to Riyadh “under
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A 28-year-old Frenchman has been sentenced to six months in jail after he published a Facebook post attempting to organize a ‘Yellow Vest’ blockade of a local petrol refinery, according to local reports.
Hedi Martin was arrested in Port-La Nouvelle, southern France on January 3, shortly after publishing the post on Facebook, la Dépêche reports. In his post, Martin called for a ‘Yellow Vest’ blockade of the petrol refinery in the coastal town, urging people to “stand up to the CRS [riot police],” according to WSWS.
State prosecutors noted video footage of Martin on his Facebook page at several Yellow Vest protests in the region, and criticized him for allegedly resigning from his short-term contract at a chocolate factory to “spend between four and seven hours every day” demonstrating.
The state prosecutor had reportedly sought a harsher penalty of two years imprisonment and a three-year protesting ban. However, the fact that Martin had not actually
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In a major speech today Brexiteer Boris Johnson is to set out his stall and vision for the country, including a crucial intervention on mass migration which he will point out has led to corporation holding down wages.
Speaking today at the HQ of JCB, the company of Leave donor and businessman Anthony Bamford, Boris is expected to say: “Yes (Brexit) was about democracy… but that vote, was also triggered by a feeling that in some way the people of this country has been drifting too far apart and in areas where we need to come together.
“We all know about boardroom pay and the huge expansion in the last 25 years of the gap between the remuneration of FTSE 100 CEOs and the average workers in their firms.
“We know one of the ways big corporations have held wages down is that they have had access to unlimited pools of labour from other countries.”
It is a fact that since the number of EU workers in the UK has fallen slightly, wages have increased at their faste
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A shocking one-in-three United Nations employees report they have been sexually harassed at work over the past two years, according to a first-of-its-kind survey – and the figure is even higher for whole-career harassment.
While the most common types of “harassment” reported were “sexual stories or jokes that were offensive” and “offensive remarks about appearance, body or sexual activities,” more serious transgressions were also common, including offensive gestures and touching, as well as unwelcome attempts at conversation about sexual matters.
Two-thirds of the harassers were male. Only a third of the victims said they “took action” following the harassment. The survey was conducted by management consultancy Deloitte in the form of a confidential online questionnaire.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wrote in a letter to UN staff that the “sobering statistics” provided “evidence of what needs to change” to improve the UN’s work environment. While he claime
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