People aged over 85 will today begin to be vaccinated against Covid-19 in their local GP practice or in 40 vaccination centres around the country.

New Zealand's biggest city has begun a snap three-day lockdown, forcing two million people to stay at home, as authorities scrambled to contain the nation's first outbreak of the highly contagious variant first detected in the UK.

One of the deep driving forces behind Brexit has been a sense of alienation amongst many English people - of being left behind, disenfranchised, ignored, exploited.

Just one in eight sex offenders being released from prison have taken part in the State's main treatment programme, according to new figures.

Google and Facebook are "very close" to deals with major Australian media to pay for news, a top government official has said, as the tech giants scramble to avoid landmark regulation.

Talks on the holding of the Leaving Certificate this year will continue today between the Department of Education and officials of the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland.

There are 916 patients with Covid-19 in hospitals, according to the latest figures from the Covid-19 Data Hub.

Myanmar's junta has deployed extra troops around the country and choked the internet as it intensified a crackdown on anti-coup protests, but defiant demonstrators again took to the streets.

A former South Korean coastguard chief has been cleared of negligence over bungled rescue operations for one of the country's deadliest maritime disasters, when more than 300 people were killed, most of them schoolchildren.

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said he has contacted gardaí through his solicitors following a complaint made against him for the leaking of a document relating to a GP contract.

Separatist parties boosted their majority in Catalonia's regional parliament in an election today, more than three years after a failed bid to break away from Spain, partial results showed.

Families of those who died in the Stardust disaster have called for funding to be released to allow fresh inquests into their deaths get under way.

The Stardust disaster, in which 48 young people died and more than 200 were injured when a fire ripped through a nightclub in Dublin's northside in the early 1980s, is seared into the hearts and memories of a generation.

More than 15 million people in Britain most vulnerable to coronavirus have received a first vaccination dose, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said.

A gallant Ireland came up agonisingly short in their attempt to keep their Six Nations title hopes alive as they fell to a 15-13 defeat to France in Dublin.

The Department of Health has been notified of 17 further coronavirus-related deaths, with 788 new confirmed cases.

The Chief Executive of the Health Service Executive has said the number of vaccines being distributed will almost double in the coming week.

Britain's Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle are expecting their second child, their spokesman has said.

A dog has died when a garda firearm was discharged during a search of a house in Dublin today.

The head of Guinea's health agency has said that the country was in the midst of an Ebola "epidemic situation" with seven cases confirmed in the West African nation, including three deaths.