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Almost 3,000 drivers caught speeding over bank holiday weekend

Almost 3,000 drivers caught speeding over bank holiday weekend

BreakingNews.ie3 days ago

Almost 3,000 drivers were caught speeding over the bank holiday weekend, according to gardaí.
This wass part of an operation that started on Thursday at 7am and lasted until 7am Tuesday.
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The highst speed was recorded was on the M50 at Templeogue, where a driver was recorded riving 188km/h in a 100km/h zone.
Other speeds included a driver going 119km/h in a 80km/h zone on R148 at Broadford, Co. Kildare.
While in Dunboyne, Co. Meath, a driver was recorded going 114km/h in a 60km/h zone.
Over 4,000 breath tests and approximately 270 oral fluid tests were carried out, leading to 167 arrests for suspected driving under the influence of an intoxicant.
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During this period, there was one fatality on our roads, while 14 serious collisions resulted in 14 individuals sustaining severe and life-threatening injuries.
There was 210 fixed charge notices for drivers using their phones, with over 215 for Unaccompanied learner drivers. Over 70 drivers were given fixed charged notices for not wearing a seatbelt.
99 vehicles were seized from learner permit holders driving unaccompanied, with 380 vehicles seized for not having tax or insurance.
In a statement, gardaí said: "An Garda Síochána continue to appeal to all road users to never drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs, to slow down and to always choose a speed that is appropriate to the driving conditions, to wear your seatbelt and keep your eyes always on the road."

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Kidnapping fears prompt warning to tourists using dating apps in Mexico
Kidnapping fears prompt warning to tourists using dating apps in Mexico

The Independent

timean hour ago

  • The Independent

Kidnapping fears prompt warning to tourists using dating apps in Mexico

US tourists visiting Mexico have been warned to 'use caution' on dating apps after several kidnappings in popular tourist destinations. On Tuesday (3 June), the US Consulate General Guadalajara issued a security alert to 'use caution when using dating apps'. It warned: 'U.S. Consulate General Guadalajara has confirmed several reports of U.S. citizens being kidnapped by individuals the victims met on dating apps in recent months in the Puerto Vallarta and Nuevo Nayarit areas. 'Victims and their family members in the United States have at times been extorted for large sums of money to secure their release. Please be aware that this type of violence is not limited to one geographic area.' The security alert identified Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco and Nuevo Nayarit as potentially dangerous areas to use dating apps in Mexico. Under the State Department's travel advisory for Mexico, Jalisco is classified as 'Level 3: Reconsider Travel' due to crime and kidnapping, with Nayarit a 'Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution' due to crime. The US consulate advised travellers to only meet strangers in public places and to avoid isolation locations, including hotel rooms where 'crimes are most likely to occur'. It added that tourists should make friends and family aware of their plans and the platform they are using before meeting someone from a dating app. 'Trust your instincts. If something does not feel right, do not hesitate to remove yourself from a situation,' said the alert. In February, tourists were warned not to travel to several Mexican cities due to 'increasingly frequent gun battles' and criminally manufactured IEDs in one region. The US travel advisory for the Tamaulipas region, bordering Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, has a level 4, 'do not travel' warning due to violent crime and kidnapping.

Terrifying moment two children cheat death after falling from bouncy castle blown 40 feet into the air during school fund-raiser
Terrifying moment two children cheat death after falling from bouncy castle blown 40 feet into the air during school fund-raiser

Daily Mail​

timean hour ago

  • Daily Mail​

Terrifying moment two children cheat death after falling from bouncy castle blown 40 feet into the air during school fund-raiser

Terrifying footage captures the moment two children cheat death after falling from a bouncy castle blown 40 feet into the air by strong winds. The horror happened during a fund-raising day at a school in South Africa when an unexpected gust caused the apparently untethered inflatable to take flight. Witnesses at the Laerskool Protearif primary in Krugersdorp screamed in terror as the multi-coloured castle spiralled high into the sky. A shocked attendant watched helplessly as one of the children trapped on the inflatable was unable to hold on and plummeted to the ground below. Just moments later, a second youngster also lost their grip and plunged off the side of the castle. Quick-thinking parents at the event formed a human crash pad to break the pupils' fall, but despite their efforts, both children were still seriously injured. They were rushed to hospital where one was said to have a fractured skull and the other a broken arm. It is not known how many or if any other children were on board and managed to cling on inside the bouncy castle which landed about 50 feet from where it took off. The fund-raising event that nearly turned into a tragic disaster was held last Saturday on the school playing fields attended by over 1000 parents, pupils and friends. School headmaster Deon Lourens declined to comment but a statement on the school Facebook site confirmed two learners were rushed to the nearest A & E unit. It revealed that one child, thought to be the one with the broken arm, was released the same day, and the other with a fractured skull, was released three days later. The statement read that both children were receiving trauma counselling but added: 'It is with great gratitude that we are happy to share the very good news with you. 'The two children who sustained injuries during the fracture accident at the Protea festival on Saturday were discharged from hospital on 31/5 and 3/6 respectively. 'The necessary trauma-counselling was given to both children, as well as to their co-learners, who experienced the event and thank you all for standing together. 'We thank you very much for everyone's positive support, help and prayers' it said. An eye-witness with two pupils at the school, who asked not to be named for fear of getting her children into trouble, said: 'When they fell I thought they were dead. 'I was watching from a food stall with my girls when I heard screaming and turned around and just saw this blue, green and red thing shooting up to the heavens. 'Then there was a huge scream when first one child and then another fell out but of all the places they could have landed it was right over a group of parents below. 'They reached up their arms to try to catch the falling children and undoubtedly saved their lives or saved them from much worse injuries by cushioning them. 'It was not a very windy day but it seemed this huge gust just came from nowhere and it was said the bouncy castle had not been secured to the ground' she said. The school has 620 pupils aged 6 to 13 and last hit the headlines due to high winds when a tornado blew off its roof and destroyed its buildings in 2017. The 100mph tornado devastated a huge area of Johannesburg killing three people. A video of the incident was given to a local paper The Citizen by a concerned parent who said: 'I have looked at the video again and again and it appears untethered. 'While I saw that other inflatable structures were secured it did not look as if this jumping castle was tied to the ground in any way and went up about 3 storeys. 'I seriously hope lessons are learned for future school fundraisers' he said. It is unclear from the footage whether any ropes, tethers or anchoring mechanisms usually sold with the product were being used as they have to be by the law. Melissa Vere Russel of ABC Jumping Castles, not the company used, said: 'In high gusts a bouncy castle can act like a parachute and the wind can carry it away. 'All castles are manufactured with mechanisms to secure them to the ground and failing to anchor them properly could end in disaster and could be fatal'. The school's principal Deon Lourens declined to comment and his deputy Lauren van der Merwe said the matter had been referred to the Department of Education. A school spokesman added: 'There is a full and transparent investigation underway into what happened and it would inappropriate to comment until that is concluded'. Disasters on bouncy castles 'taking off' are not uncommon and a criminal trial into the death of 6 children killed in 2021 in Devonport, Tasmania, ended today. The fatalaties, including 3 serious injuries, happened at Hillcrest Primary School when a bouncy castle was blown 33 feet into the air and landed in a tree 160 feet away. The operator of Taz-Zorb who owned the inflatable Rosemary Ann Gamble was cleared of breaching work safety laws to the anger of parents by a magistrate. It ruled that the 'dust-devil' that hit the bouncy castle killing the children was 'due to an unprecedented weather system that was impossible to predict and avoid'. The victims 4 boys and 2 girls were all pupils aged between 11 and 12. Angry parents shouted at the bouncy castle owner after the verdict who sat quietly sobbing. An investigation by the Journal of Paediatric & Child Health in Australia after the tragedy collated incident from all around the world based on press reports. It found that between 2000 and 2022 that there had been 28 deaths and 484 children and people injured on airborne bouncy castles with a third in China. In 2018 two fairground workers were jailed for 3 years for the bouncy castle manslaughter on grounds of gross negligence after the death of Summer Grant, 7. The schoolgirl was on an inflatable that was blown away with her inside in Harlow, Essex, which cartwheeled 300 yards down a hill across a park and into a tree. In 2004 a 5-year-old boy died falling from a bouncy castle which was blown 20 feet up into the air and onto the pitch of a baseball stadium in Arizona by a gust. In 2006 two women aged 38 and 68 were killed at Riverside Park in Chester —le-Street, County Durham, falling out of an airborne inflatable but 30 survived. In 2024 the 2-year-old son of a Phoenix firefighter was killed when a bouncy castle at a house party in Casa Grand, Arizona, took off in high winds and he fell out. In the UK the Health & Safety Executive says inflatables by law must have at least six anchor points with high quality rope able to take high pressures at all points.

On Ireland's peat bogs, climate action clashes with tradition
On Ireland's peat bogs, climate action clashes with tradition

Reuters

time2 hours ago

  • Reuters

On Ireland's peat bogs, climate action clashes with tradition

CLONBULLOGUE, Ireland, June 6 (Reuters) - As wind turbines on the horizon churn out clean energy, John Smyth bends to stack damp peat - the cheap, smoky fuel he has harvested for half a century. The painstaking work of "footing turf," as the process of drying peat for burning is known, is valued by people across rural Ireland as a source of low-cost energy that gives their homes a distinctive smell. But peat-harvesting has also destroyed precious wildlife habitats, and converted what should be natural stores for carbon dioxide into one of Ireland's biggest emitters of planet-warming gases. As the European Union seeks to make Dublin enforce the bloc's environmental law, peat has become a focus for opposition to policies that Smyth and others criticise as designed by wealthy urbanites with little knowledge of rural reality. "The people that are coming up with plans to stop people from buying turf or from burning turf... They don't know what it's like to live in rural Ireland," Smyth said. He describes himself as a dinosaur obstructing people that, he says, want to destroy rural Ireland. "That's what we are. Dinosaurs. Tormenting them." When the peat has dried, Smyth keeps his annual stock in a shed and tosses the sods, one at a time, into a metal stove used for cooking. The stove also heats radiators around his home. Turf, Smyth says, is for people who cannot afford what he labels "extravagant fuels," such as gas or electricity. The average Irish household energy bill is almost double, according to Ireland's utility regulator, the 800 euros ($906) Smyth pays for turf for a year. Smyth nevertheless acknowledges digging for peat could cease, regardless of politics, as the younger generation has little interest in keeping the tradition alive. "They don't want to go to the bog. I don't blame them," Smyth said. Peat has an ancient history. Over thousands of years, decaying plants in wetland areas formed the bogs. In drier, lowland parts of Ireland, dome-shaped raised bogs developed as peat accumulated in former glacial lakes. In upland and coastal areas, high rainfall and poor drainage created blanket bogs over large expanses. In the absence of coal and extensive forests, peat became an important source of fuel. By the second half of the 20th century, hand-cutting and drying had mostly given way to industrial-scale harvesting that reduced many bogs to barren wastelands. Ireland has lost over 70% of its blanket bog and over 80% of its raised bogs, according to estimates published by the Irish Peatland Conservation Council and National Parks and Wildlife Service, respectively. Following pressure from environmentalists, in the 1990s, an EU directive on habitats listed blanket bogs and raised bogs as priority habitats. As the EU regulation added to the pressure for change, in 2015, semi-state peat harvesting firm Bord na Mona said it planned to end peat extraction and shift to renewable energy. In 2022, the sale of peat for burning was banned. An exception was made, however, for "turbary rights," allowing people to dig turf for their personal use. Added to that, weak enforcement of complex regulations meant commercial-scale harvesting has continued across the country. Ireland's Environmental Protection Agency last year reported 38 large-scale illegal cutting sites, which it reported to local authorities responsible for preventing breaches of the regulation. The agency also said 350,000 metric tons of peat were exported, mostly for horticulture, in 2023. Data for 2024 has not yet been published. Pippa Hackett, a former Green Party junior minister for agriculture, who runs a farm near to where Smyth lives, said progress was too slow. "I don't think it's likely that we'll see much action between now and the end of this decade," Hackett said. Her party's efforts to ensure bogs were restored drew aggression from activists in some turf-cutting areas, she said. "They see us as their arch enemy," she added. In an election last year, the party lost nine of the 10 seats it had in parliament and was replaced as the third leg of the centre-right coalition government by a group of mainly rural independent members of parliament. The European Commission, which lists over 100 Irish bogs as Special Areas of Conservation, last year referred Ireland to the European Court of Justice for failing to protect them and taking insufficient action to restore the sites. The country also faces fines of billions of euros if it misses its 2030 carbon reduction target, according to Ireland's fiscal watchdog and climate groups. Degraded peatlands in Ireland emit 21.6 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year, according to a 2022 United Nations report. Ireland's transport sector, by comparison, emitted 21.4 million tons in 2023, government statistics show. The Irish government says turf-cutting has ended on almost 80% of the raised bog special areas of conservation since 2011. It has tasked Bord na Mona with "rewetting" the bogs, allowing natural ecosystems to recover, and eventually making the bogs once again carbon sinks. So far, Bord na Mona says it has restored around 20,000 hectares of its 80,000 hectare target. On many bogs, scientists monitoring emissions have replaced the peat harvesters, while operators of mechanical diggers carve out the most damaged areas to be filled with water. Bord na Mona is also using the land to generate renewable energy, including wind and solar. Mark McCorry, ecology manager at Bord na Mona, said eventually the bogs would resume their status as carbon sinks. "But we have to be realistic that is going to take a long time," he said. ($1 = 0.8828 euros)

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