Newstalk Breakfast

The Oireachtas Media Committee is meeting today to discuss the regulation of online platforms, with senior figures from Meta, Google and TikTok due to appear.  Social media platform X has refused the invitation 

Joining Anton was someone who was once at the heart of Meta, Arturo Béjar, the company’s former Director of Engineering for Protect and Care, who has since become a whistleblower. 

Today, peace talks are set to take place in Abu Dhabi between the US, Ukraine and Russia in the hopes to bring an end to the war in Ukraine after nearly three years. We get the latest on this with Emmanuelle Chaze, Ukraine Correspondent for France 24.

Tusla is opposing a proposed new law that would remove parental rights from people who kill their partner, arguing that a child’s best interests may still be served by maintaining a connection with their birth parents, even if the parent who remains is responsible for the death of the other.

Internal emails show that the agency was disappointed that the Department of Justice ignored its objections to Valerie’s Law, which would remove automatic guardianship rights from those convicted and in some cases suspected of killing the other parent of their child.

Valerie’s law is named after, of course, Valerie French, and her brother David spoke to Anton this morning.

Now it’s time for “Between the Lines”, where we take a closer look at some of the stories you may have missed in the news this morning. Joining Anton this morning was Sinéad O’Carroll, Editor of the Journal.ie. 

Metropolitan Police has launched a criminal investigation into Peter Mandelson following claims he passed market-sensitive information to Jeffrey Epstein. It comes after the Cabinet Office referred material to police after reviewing Epstein file documents that suggest he forwarded internal government information to Epstein when he was business secretary in 2009.

For the latest on this Anton spoke to Political Commentator Adam Boulton.

Junk food ads aimed at children should be banned. That’s one of a number of calls made by members of the public in conversations hosted by Safefood Ireland last year. 

This comes as Safe Food is today launching a new exhibition called an ‘Appetite for Change’, to start a dialogue on healthy eating in Ireland and to tell us more about this is Anna Taylor Executive Director, The Food Foundation.

Last night might have been weather warning-free, but we’re not yet free from heavy rain and flooding. The extremely wet conditions in recent weeks could be replaced by freezing weather and snow by the middle of February, according to some longer-term predictions. 

Here to tell us more was Alan O’Reilly from Carlow Weather.

68-year-old retired prison officer Paudie Maloney has had quite a year! After becoming a household name after his memorable run on The Traitors Ireland, he has now taken his talents to the ballroom on RTÉ’s Dancing with the Stars. 

Paudie spoke to Anton about life after The Traitors.

The bottle Re-turn scheme has kick-started a craze of “bin scavenging” across Dublin leaving the city like a bomb site according to Richard Shakespeare, the chief executive of Dublin City Council. 

For more on this Anton was joined on the show by Nial Ring Ind Councillor for Dublin North Inner City.

Babies as young as two-months-old can categorise objects in their brains, which is far younger than previously thought, according to new research by Trinity College Dublin, Queen's University Belfast and Stanford University. 

 To discuss these findings was Professor Rhodri Cusack from Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience and co-author of the research.