HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid has described the challenges facing the health service as greater now than at any time since the pandemic hit.

Almost 200,000 Covid-19 PCR tests have been lab-tested in the last seven days.

Austria will impose a lockdown for all and make vaccinations mandatory, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg announced on Friday, making the country the first in the EU to take such stringent measures as coronavirus cases spiral.

Employees should work from home from today unless it is necessary to attend the workplace in person.

The husband and father of Marie and Darragh Downey has said their deaths should never have happened, and he hopes recommendations made by the jury at their inquest will ensure that no family will be touched by such a tragedy in the future.

A Co Offaly teenager's reindeer decorations have made it onto the shelves of a major supermarket chain.

Power NI has announced a price hike of almost 22% for its domestic electricity customers in a move attributed to soaring global wholesale energy costs.

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest rose by almost 22% from August 2020 to July 2021 compared with the same period the year before, reaching the highest level in 15 years, authorities said.

The longest partial lunar eclipse in nearly 600 years, which will bathe the Moon in red, was visible for a big slice of humanity today.

The first case of Covid-19 identified in Wuhan, China and presented as such by the WHO was actually days later than previously believed and at an animal market, a top scientist has said in the journal Science.

The first national safeguarding day gets under way today. The nationwide initiative, coordinated by Safeguarding Ireland, aims to raise better understanding of safeguarding and the prevention of adult abuse.

Emergency crews are still trying to reach 18,000 people left stranded after floods and mudslides destroyed roads, houses and bridges in British Columbia, in what could be the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said he would repeal controversial farm laws that farmers have protested for more than a year, in what is seen as a significant climbdown.

The Taoiseach is in Wales for a meeting of the British Irish Council, the body set up under the Good Friday Agreement to bring together political leaders from Ireland, the UK and the Devolved Administrations.

Representatives of the Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre will be presented with an international award in the Hague this afternoon, for its work with minorities.

Today is an important day to highlight the importance of safeguarding. However, political will is required to ensure that society's most vulnerable are kept safe through legislation and policy, writes Social Affairs Correspondent Ailbhe Conneely.

The Belarusian border force has said it had cleared a makeshift migrant camp at the border with Poland that held around 2,000 people, with the occupants relocated to a reception centre nearby.

Ryanair said today it had moved a request with Britain's financial watchdog to delist from the London Stock Exchange.

China's foreign ministry has accused the US of violating the "Olympic spirit" after President Joe Biden said he was considering a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics over human rights abuses.

Survivors who experienced abuse while they were boarded out to live on farms as children have protested their omission from the mother-and-baby homes redress scheme, explains Conor McMorrow.