分类： society

Almost two years after a devastating explosion at a Creeslough, County Donegal service station claimed 10 lives, Ireland’s national planning body has overturned a local council’s approval to build a new petrol station near the site of the tragedy.

The deadly blast, which occurred on October 7, 2022, at the village’s existing service station, left a community in mourning and sparked ongoing debate over development plans for the area. All 10 victims were local residents: five-year-old Shauna Flanagan-Garwe and her 50-year-old father Robert Garwe, 48-year-old Catherine O’Donnell and her 13-year-old son James Monaghan, 24-year-old Jessica Gallagher, 49-year-old Martin McGill, 74-year-old James O’Flaherty, 49-year-old Martina Martin, 66-year-old Hugh Kelly, and 14-year-old Leona Harper. To date, no official cause of the explosion has been released, though Irish police (Gardaí) have submitted two investigative files to the Director of Public Prosecutions, the most recent of which included formal prosecution recommendations.

Earlier this year, Donegal County Council approved a planning application for a new service station development on land close to the original explosion site. The proposed project included a new retail building with a shop, post office, and deli, alongside a forecourt with underground fuel storage, fuel pumps, a car wash, outdoor launderette kiosk, and ATM. This marked the second time a proposal for a new petrol station in Creeslough had advanced through planning, after a previous proposal for development directly on the original blast site was approved and then overturned on appeal by bereaved families.

Following an appeal from relatives of those killed in the explosion, An Coimisiún Pleanála, the Republic of Ireland’s independent planning commission, has now overturned the local council’s approval. In its ruling, the commission noted that a substantial portion of the land earmarked for the commercial development is officially zoned as an “amenity area”, meaning it is designated exclusively for open space use and to support new recreation, leisure, and community facilities.

The commission found that building a commercial petrol station on this land would directly conflict with its official zoning designation. It further ruled that approving the development would run counter to the proper planning and sustainable development of the Creeslough area, and would set a harmful precedent for future commercial developments on other amenity-zoned lands across the region.

Áine Flanagan, who lost her partner Robert Garwe and daughter Shauna Flanagan-Garwe in the explosion, had spoken out against the original approval back in March, calling the Donegal County Council decision “morally and ethically wrong”. Tuesday’s ruling marks a victory for Flanagan and other bereaved families who have fought to prevent commercial development on land near the site of the tragedy.

A 30-year-old Scottish airline cabin crew member remains stranded in a Greek hospital more than a week after a devastating fall from a three-story balcony during her birthday vacation on the island of Rhodes, after her travel insurance declined to cover the high cost of a medical repatriation flight. Denby McLaren, a native of Larkhall, Scotland, was celebrating the milestone birthday alongside her mother Sharon when the accident occurred on October 6, leaving her with life-altering injuries that have left her unable to move her legs.

McLaren suffered a fractured vertebra and multiple broken bones in her foot, and medical teams have not yet confirmed whether the damage to her spine will result in permanent paralysis. Her partner Craig Anderson immediately traveled to Greece to be by her side after the incident, but the growing financial burden of extended medical care and emergency transport has left the family turning to public support.

While McLaren holds a standard travel insurance policy that covers local hospital treatment, it explicitly excludes coverage for the specialized stretcher-equipped air ambulance that is required to safely fly her back to Scotland for ongoing care. In addition to the repatriation cost, every extra day the family spends in Greece adds to mounting daily medical and accommodation bills, a challenge compounded by language barriers that complicate communication with local care providers.

To cover the £28,000 cost of the emergency flight, Anderson launched a public fundraiser on the GoFundMe platform, which has already seen an outpouring of community support. As of the latest update, nearly £19,000 has been raised from hundreds of individual donations, ranging from small £5 contributions to larger gifts.

Family friend Leeanne Weir, who has helped coordinate the fundraising effort, described the incident as absolutely horrific for the young woman, who is widely described by loved ones as a kind, warm person. “It’s an unimaginable situation to be stuck in a foreign hospital, far from home, not knowing if you’ll have permanent paralysis while facing a huge bill just to get back to the care you need,” Weir said in an interview with BBC Scotland News. “We’re so grateful for every single donation that has come in so far. The response has been phenomenal, and we just want to get Denby home where she can get the long-term care she needs from the teams she knows.”

Doctors continue to monitor McLaren’s neurological function to determine the full extent of her spinal damage, with family members noting that while her prognosis remains uncertain, she is fortunate to have survived a fall of that height.

A portion of a residential housing estate in the Birchwood neighborhood of Waterford, Republic of Ireland, remains sealed off to the public following a serious house fire that authorities fear has claimed multiple lives. The blaze broke out at a property located just off Killure Road in Birchwood, prompting an immediate large-scale response from emergency services. As of the latest updates, multiple responding agencies including firefighters and the Garda Síochána (Irish national police) remain on site conducting investigations and securing the area. Technical staff from Gas Networks Ireland have also been deployed to the scene, according to Ireland’s national public service broadcaster RTÉ, which first reported on the incident. In an official statement released to the press, Gardaí confirmed that the situation remains an ongoing, evolving incident, and that investigators are not currently able to release additional details regarding the cause of the fire, the identities of potential casualties, or the extent of structural damage to the property. Local residents have reported seeing a heavy emergency service presence in the area since the fire was reported, with many expressing shock at the prospect of multiple fatalities linked to the incident. Authorities have urged members of the public to avoid the cordoned off section of the Birchwood housing estate while investigative work continues.

A 31-year-old speleologist has escaped from a dangerous entrapment in a Sardinian cave, pulled to safety after more than a full day trapped 10 meters below the surface following an unexpected rock collapse. Luca Olmetto, a cave researcher from the northwestern Sardinian town of Codrongianos, was exploring the remote Gorropeddu cave near Urzulei in central-eastern Sardinia when the rockslide struck him on Sunday afternoon.

The incident triggered a large-scale, high-stakes rescue operation coordinated by Italy’s National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps in partnership with local fire services. More than 100 emergency responders worked nonstop with meticulous care over 24 hours to reach Olmetto, navigating extremely tight, confined cave spaces that made the mission uniquely challenging. Responders manually cleared fallen rock debris block by block to access the cavity where Olmetto remained stranded, avoiding the risk of additional rockfalls that could have further endangered both the trapped researcher and the rescue team.

In a social media statement, the rescue corps confirmed that the operation was complete on Monday afternoon, with good news: Olmetto was found alive, conscious, and able to be freed from his underground confinement. After being stabilized on the surface, the speleologist was airlifted by rescue helicopter to a nearby hospital for mandatory medical evaluations and any required treatment.

Across Olmetto’s hometown of Codrongianos, the entire community held collective anxiety through the long hours of the rescue operation. In a public post shared after the successful rescue, Codrongianos’ municipal council acknowledged the tense wait: “After hours of great anxiety, the news that the entire Codrongianos was waiting for has finally arrived: Luca is out of the cave! It has been a difficult hour, during which the entire community has been on edge following the rescue operations.” The council also extended formal gratitude to the 100+ rescuers who worked tirelessly through challenging conditions to bring Olmetto back to safety.

On a Monday morning in southern France, a shocking act of school violence left two school staff injured and triggered an immediate law enforcement and government response, after a 14-year-old student opened fire on campus at Lakanal middle school in Aubagne, a small city roughly 11 miles east of Marseille.

Regional officials confirmed to local French media that the teenage suspect entered the school grounds carrying a shotgun hidden inside a guitar case. After opening fire on school personnel, the boy was quickly subdued by a brave member of the school’s staff before any further harm could be done to the school’s 600-plus student body.

Aubagne Mayor Jean-Pierre Squillari confirmed that no students were harmed in the incident, and the two injured teachers are receiving medical treatment for non-life-threatening wounds. Detailed accounts from Marseille prosecutor Nicolas Bessone outline that the 53-year-old principal suffered gunshot wounds to the leg and lower back, while a 37-year-old teacher was hit in the thigh. A third individual on campus sustained minor injuries, and students and staff in adjacent areas of the school escaped physical harm but reported severe psychological distress.

After the initial shooting on the school’s first floor, Bessone said the suspect moved to the second floor where he fired two additional rounds: one at the floor in front of a third teacher, and a second inside an occupied classroom that struck a chalkboard. No one was hit in these rounds, though the people present left the encounter deeply shaken. The teenager was eventually restrained in a school corridor and taken into police custody.

In a post-incident update shared on social media, Squillari noted that all students were placed in immediate lockdown and secured within seconds of the first shots being fired. On-site psychological support services were activated immediately to help students and staff process the traumatic event. Squillari told reporters that most students did not witness the shooting directly, as it unfolded in a school hallway, but many still showed signs of psychological distress that are being addressed by mental health professionals. He added that the suspect was a regular student at the school, and the only known pre-incident contact was a meeting request the boy’s father had submitted to the school’s educational advisor, with no further context available as of Monday.

Two student witnesses told French broadcaster BFMTV they encountered the suspect just after the shooting began, when a fire alarm pulled them into the hallway. The students said the teenager was roughly a meter away from them carrying a hunting rifle, fired a round into the ground, and followed the group briefly as they fled the hallway screaming.

French law enforcement officials have launched an attempted murder investigation into the shooting. Local police sources told regional media the incident is not linked to the ongoing national protests over poor school infrastructure and working conditions in the French education system. After searching the suspect’s family home, law enforcement recovered a cache of weapons and took both of the boy’s parents into custody, a fact later confirmed by French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez.

During an on-site visit Monday alongside Education Minister Édouard Geffray, Nunez announced that the school would remain closed to all students on Tuesday to allow for investigative work and mental health support for affected staff. French President Emmanuel Macron issued a public statement extending his full solidarity and support to the shaken school community, praising the quick, calm response of the school’s educational team that prevented what could have been a far deadlier outcome.

Geffray echoed Macron’s remarks in a social media post, calling the shooting an unacceptable act of violence that underscores a growing trend of unregulated violence in French society, an issue that requires collective action from all sectors of the nation.

After three weeks of escalating, often violent student protests across France demanding increased investment and resources for the country’s public secondary education system, the French administration has extended its first material compromise to demonstrators: a pledge to deploy 3,000 additional substitute teachers in the coming days. The announcement came from Education Minister Edouard Geffray during a primetime national television interview Thursday evening, capping off another day of chaotic demonstrations that drew tens of thousands of participants nationwide. The widespread unrest has already become the most significant episode of student-led civil unrest France has seen in decades, unfolding against a broader backdrop of growing social and political tension across the country ahead of 2027 presidential elections.

On Thursday, what protest organizers labeled “Act Four” of the movement brought an estimated 71,000 demonstrators into the streets across France, with 24,000 gathering at Paris’ iconic Bastille square just hours before Geffray’s announcement. In multiple locations, demonstrations devolved into violence: protesters in Paris threw paving stones and homemade fireworks at law enforcement, who responded by deploying tear gas to disperse crowds. In Bordeaux, a local high school was ransacked by demonstrators, and a deputy headteacher was assaulted by protesters in Marseille. By Friday, official data showed that roughly 140 out of France’s 3,500 public lycées (high schools) remained fully or partially closed — a sharp reduction from previous days of protest, though movement organizers have already called for another national day of action next Tuesday.

The root of the student unrest is a longstanding, widely acknowledged crisis in French secondary education: thousands of instructional hours are lost annually to unfilled teacher absences, as the education system lacks sufficient supply staff to cover for permanent teachers. Geffray explained that newly launched administrative software would allow the ministry to rapidly redirect the 3,000 newly mobilized substitute teachers to the 500 high schools facing the most severe staffing shortages, most of which are located in working-class, high-immigration suburban districts where gaps in education provision have long been most acute. In addition to the new supply teachers, the minister announced expanded overtime funding through an existing scheme to encourage existing teachers to fill staffing gaps, and confirmed that student demands would be formally incorporated into upcoming negotiations for the 2027 national education budget.

However, the first concession falls far short of the transformative new investment protesters have demanded, and the government has explicitly ruled out large-scale new spending. Facing intense scrutiny from international financial markets over France’s already precarious public debt levels, the administration is unwilling to make major budget commitments that could destabilize the country’s fiscal position. This has led to a muted, skeptical response from protest leaders. Nathanaël Combary, representative of moderate student union Renouveau Lycéen (Lycée Renewal), noted that the announcement aligns with a small portion of the movement’s demands but that demonstrators are waiting for tangible, on-the-ground results. For more radical factions, the compromise is wholly insufficient: Sabrine Kharbach, a leader of the radical-left aligned Union Etudiante (Student Union), insisted the movement will continue until the government commits €10 billion in new education funding.

The protests have quickly become a political flashpoint, drawing sharply diverging reactions from across France’s political spectrum. Radical-left opposition leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon praised Thursday’s demonstration at the Bastille, writing on social media that students had “retaken the Bastille.” On the opposite end of the political divide, hard-right opposition party National Rally condemned the government’s decision to offer any concessions at all. Spokesperson Laurent Jacobelli argued the move legitimizes violence, saying the government was sending a message that destructive protest tactics would be rewarded with policy changes.

The student unrest comes as France faces a growing wave of social discontent across multiple sectors, with existing anger over rising fuel costs and deep distress in the agricultural sector already poised to trigger additional mass demonstrations. A revived “yellow vest” movement has called for a national day of protest next Saturday, October 17, echoing the 2018 movement that forced the government to scrap a planned fuel tax increase after months of widespread unrest. Adding to the atmosphere of confrontation, the upcoming 2027 presidential elections — where both far-right and far-left candidates are widely expected to outperform centrist incumbents — have amplified political tensions across the country. For its part, the government is betting that the upcoming half-term school break at the end of next week, paired with the arrival of colder, wetter autumn weather, will reduce protester turnout and defuse the unrest before it escalates further.

Official government data shows that more than 6,800 people have been arrested since the protests began, with 86% of those detained under the age of 18.