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Friday’s Top Stories: Ten held and campervan seized over drug smuggling; First look inside Clerys Quarter

Here are the stories you need to start your day including Irish Rail paid out over €207,000 to former employee last year

St Patrick's Day parade: Triplet Josh Holmes trying a warrior costume during a fitting ahead of the St Patrick's Day parade in Cork this Sunday at 1pm. Cork City Council's St Patrick's Festival starts today and runs until Monday. Photograph: Claire Keogh

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	Eimear O'Brien <eimear@lunasapr.ie>
St Patrick's Day parade: Triplet Josh Holmes trying a warrior costume during a fitting ahead of the St Patrick's Day parade in Cork this Sunday at 1pm. Cork City Council's St Patrick's Festival starts today and runs until Monday. Photograph: Claire Keogh Further Info Eimear O'Brien
Ten arrests in Co Cork as gardaí target international drug trafficking gang

Gardaí believe they have disrupted the activities of a major international drug smuggling gang after they arrested 10 men in west Cork whom they suspect were in the area to try to land a consignment of cocaine from a ship offshore.

Officers from the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau along with officers from the Cork County Divisional Drug Unit arrested the 10 suspected gang members in Leap and Tragumna villages near Skibbereen in west Cork at about 7.30am on Thursday.

No drugs were recovered. Gardaí arrested six of the suspects after stopping a foreign-registered campervan in the middle of Leap.

Top News Stories

News from around the World

  • Chuck Schumer’s speech on Israel puts focus on Biden administration’s approach to Gaza: At last, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate could find a point of agreement: what they heard was unprecedented, writes Keith Duggan. Chuck Schumer has made a lot of speeches on Capitol Hill but there was a sense, in the opening minutes of his address before the Senate on Thursday morning, that he was embarking on a delivery that will become a defining element of his legacy.

The Big Read

 Clerys Quarter on O’Connell Street Dublin ahead of the opening of the first retail outlet there since the store closed in 2015. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien
Clerys Quarter on O’Connell Street Dublin ahead of the opening of the first retail outlet there since the store closed in 2015. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien
  • First look at Clerys Quarter: Fifth floor is one of two added to site offering impressive views over Dublin: Anyone searching for signs that Dublin keeps on changing and nothing stays the same need look no further than the big H&M posters in the windows of Clerys on O’Connell Street as it re-enters the world of retail this morning, Conor Pope writes. While there will be people buying and selling clothes on the site for the first time since it shut up shop in the dead of night almost a decade ago leaving 460 staff with neither notice nor jobs, many who visit the new-look Clerys Quarter might be confused or disappointed by what they encounter.

The best from Opinion

Today's Business

  • Online is the new face of the booming beauty business: Irish consumers were spending €2.6 billion on hair and beauty treatments before the Covid pandemic upended the sector, according to a report commissioned by the Hair and Beauty Industry Confederation of Ireland. Close to half of that was on hair, skin and cosmetic products with the balance on the services of hairdressers and beauty therapists.

Top Sports news

Picture of the Day

Former RTE journalist Charlie Bird's dog Tiger follows his coffin as it's brought from the Mansion House in Dublin after his memorial service
Photograph: Laura Hutton
Former RTE journalist Charlie Bird's dog Tiger follows his coffin as it's brought from the Mansion House in Dublin after his memorial service Photograph: Laura Hutton

Life & Style highlights

  • How to eat well when you don’t have time: seven tips from a nutrition expert: Maya Vadiveloo spends most weekdays studying food. As a dietitian and associate professor of nutrition at the University of Rhode Island, she pores over large data sets to help people make healthier decisions when they are shopping. But, at night, when she gets home from work, perfect nutrition is not top of mind. Here are seven tips she shared for maintaining that balance, and for eating well when you don’t have a lot of time.

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