Zuckerberg rejects facetime call for answers from five parliaments

Facebook has declined once again to send its CEO to the UK parliament — this time turning down an invitation to face questions from a grand committee comprised of representatives from five international parliaments. MPs from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Ireland and the UK have joined forces to try to pile pressure on the company’s founder, Mark […]

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Krispy Kreme 24 hour drive-through causes so much chaos in Ireland it shuts after 1 week

How excited would you be if a 24 hour doughnut drive-through opened in your neighbourhood? Would you drive there at all hours, queuing and honking your horn the whole time?
That’s exactly how excited the residents of the Irish capital Dublin were whe…

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Emma Watson pens moving open letter to Savita Halappanavar, who died after being denied an abortion

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On Oct. 28, 2012, Savita Halappanavar died in University Hospital Galway, Ireland, due to complications of a septic miscarriage after being denied an abortion. 

Her death — which an inquest ruled was caused by “medical misadventure” — was the catalyst for Ireland’s historic abortion referendum. 

Six years on from Savita’s preventable death, Emma Watson has penned a moving open letter to the 31-year-old woman. 

It was a great honour to be asked by @PORTERmagazine to pay the deepest respect to the legacy of Dr Savita Halappanavar, whose death powered the determination of activists to change Irish abortion laws & fight for reproductive justice all over the worldhttps://t.co/KZWRpp7btO pic.twitter.com/yLDXgcHKyh

— Emma Watson (@EmmaWatson) September 29, 2018 Read more…

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Alexa is reported down across Europe

Reports are coming in that Amazon’s Alexa service is down in parts of UK, Spain, Germany and Austria. According to Down Detector and Twitter, the problem started surfacing around 8am local time and still continues. Interestingly, some users are reporting the issue is isolated to Echo Dot 2 models and while other Echo devices are […]

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Apple’s messy Ireland situation has ended with a €14 billion payout

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Apple’s tax relationship with Ireland has been making headlines for years now. 

Ever since the establishment of the so-called “sweetheart deal“, which allowed Apple to pay tax that sometimes fell as low as 0.05 percent in the country, the arrangement has been raising questions.

These questions led to the EU Commission concluding, back in 2016, that “Ireland gave illegal tax benefits to Apple worth up to €13 billion”.

Well, flash forward to September 18, 2018, and the company has paid up.

Today Irish Minister of Finance @Paschald confirmed the full recovery of €14 bn of illegal aid to Apple (unpaid taxes). Good. So we can close the Court action on recovery.

— Margrethe Vestager (@vestager) September 18, 2018 Read more…

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A wildfire in Ireland has uncovered a remarkable sight from World War II

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A Second World War-era sign has been rediscovered after a gorse fire ravaged a hillside on the east coast of Ireland. 

The Irish Air Corps and Garda Air Support Unit spotted that a fire had exposed an old “Éire 8 sign” — a landmark dating back to World War — on Bray Head, in County Wicklow. 

During the war, the word Éire — which means Ireland in the Irish language — was carved into 80 headlands around Ireland to warn allied and German bombers that they were flying over a neutral territory. 

Fires on Bray Head expose amazing World War 2 landmarks. The fires exposed the old Eire 8 sign,which is in reasonable condition. Photos courtesy of the Garda Air Support Unit, which is a mixed unit operated by Air Corps Pilots and Garda specialists@gardainfo @opwireland pic.twitter.com/4vvg3HIjQv

— Irish Air Corps (@IrishAirCorps) August 4, 2018 Read more…

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Facebook gets leave to appeal to Ireland’s Supreme Court after failing to block data transfer referral to CJEU

Facebook has been given the go ahead to appeal to Ireland’s Supreme Court against an earlier High Court decision to refer key questions relating to the validity of EU-US data flows to Europe’s top court, the Irish Times reports. The eventual outcome of what is already years of legal to-ing and fro-ing — in a […]

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People are baffled by the number of water bottles Harry and Meghan were given in Ireland

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When you have fancy guests coming over, it’s only normal to lay on a good spread. You put out your good china and the poshest biscuits you can find. 

Well, that certainly seems to have been the case when Harry and Meghan popped over to Dublin for the Royal Visit to Ireland and got treated to an inordinate amount of bottled water. 

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar welcomed the new Duke and Duchess of Sussex to the government buildings on Tuesday. 

Pleasure to welcome the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to Government Buildings at the start of their visit to Irelandpic.twitter.com/PX96x4A38C

— Leo Varadkar (@campaignforleo) July 10, 2018 Read more…

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Ireland to vote on removing ‘woman’s place in the home’ clause from constitution

The Republic of Ireland will hold a referendum on an article in its Constitution which states a woman’s place in “in the home.” 
SEE ALSO: Prepare to sob at these moving stories of people travelling home for Ireland’s abortion vote
Article 41.2 …

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McDonald’s is ditching plastic straws in the UK and Ireland

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The days of sipping your milkshake through a plastic straw at McDonald’s are almost over — at least in the UK and Ireland.

The fast food giant announced on Thursday that they’ll be making the switch to paper straws in September this year.

The decision comes in the wake of the UK government announcing plans to ban the sale of plastic straws, and other single-use plastic items, as part of an effort to reduce waste and help the environment.

“Reflecting the broader public debate, our customers told us they wanted to see a move on straws but to do so without compromising their overall experience when visiting our restaurants,” said McDonald’s UK and Ireland CEO Paul Pomroy. “Over the past few months we’ve been working closely with supplier partners to find a solution that works both for our customers, and that the supply is there given the size of our business. Read more…

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Europe’s top court takes a broad view of privacy responsibilities around platforms

An interesting ruling by Europe’s top court could have some major implications for data mining tech giants like Facebook and Google, along with anyone who administers pages that allow platforms to collect and process their visitors’ personal data — such as a Facebook fan page or even potentially a site running Google Analytics. Passing judgement […]

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