By Sarah Gill
05th May 2023
05th May 2023
Your speedy summary of today's must-read stories.
Serbian shooting
A man has been arrested on suspicion of killing eight people and injuring at least 14 others in the Serbai’s second mass shooting this week. The 21-year-old gunman armed with an automatic weapon opened fire from a moving vehicle before fleeing, and the shooting spree spread across three separate villages in the area. The incident comes shortly after the worst school shooting in Serbia’s recent history, after a 13-year-old killed nine people, including eight fellow students.
1,000 new Galway jobs
US multinational Dexcom in Athenry, Co Galway are set to create up to 1,000 new jobs at their first manufacturing site in Europe, which will be built on the town’s IDA landbank. The new facility represents a €300 million investment over five years, and will have the capacity to produce millions of glucose monitors annually when it is completed.
King Charles coronation
President Michael D Higgins will meet Britain’s King Charles on Friday night, and will become the first Irish head of state to attend a British coronation when he and his wife Sabina will be present at Westminster Abbey. It will be the ninth occasion the two heads of state have met, and to mark the occasion, the president and his wife requested the Tree Council of Ireland to plant a native Irish oak tree in the woodland forest of Aurora in Co Wicklow in acknowledgement of Charles’s commitment to environmental sustainability.
The Boss is back
Bruce Springsteen is set to perform the first of three sell-out Irish concerts tonight at the RDS, with over 50,000 fans flocking to Dublin for the longest single-city stint of his European tour. The RDS has a capacity of 18,500 – and tickets to see The Boss and the E Street Band sold out within minutes of going on sale last summer. Dublin is reportedly enjoying a €20m-plus tourism boost, with hotels across the capital booked out and tables at good restaurants at a premium.
School expulsions
New figures show that 922 young people were expelled from post-primary schools since September 2017, and almost 360 during the last three years. These figures have prompted calls for a closer analysis of what should only be “last resort” disciplinary action. Expulsions should be “an absolute measure of last resort,” Children’s Rights Alliance CEO Tanya Ward told the Irish Examiner. “We should only ever see tiny numbers,” she said.