“When I look back now, I think perhaps there should have been more groundwork done,” Ms Humphreys told RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne.

“People didn’t understand what a ­‘durable relationship’ was.”

“There was a very strong recommendation from a Citizens’ Assembly that the words ‘woman in the home’ should be taken out of the Constitution, and of course that we should recognise other partnerships other than marriage,” she said.

“The Government tried to bring ­forward a form of wording that would try to do that, and as I said, we probably didn’t put in enough work.”

Babies could be brought into existence without a genetic mother after scientists created functional human eggs from skin.

American researchers demonstrated it was possible to replace the DNA from an egg with the genetic material from another person’s skin, male or female, turning the hybrid compound into a female sex cell ready for fertilisation.

The team then successfully fertilised the new ‘egg’ with sperm and began growing it into an embryo. The experiment was halted at six days – the point at which an embryo would usually be transferred to the womb in IVF.

The team has produced 82 functional eggs, which were fertilised in the lab, although only 9 per cent went on to develop into early embryos and all suffered from chromosomal abnormalities.

Nonetheless, the breakthrough opens the possibility of skin DNA from a man being placed inside a donor egg and fertilised by another man, leading to a baby with two genetic fathers and no DNA from a woman.

At least four people are dead and several others were injured after a man crashed a vehicle into a Michigan church, opened fire with a rifle, and set the building ablaze during a Sunday service, authorities said.

The suspect died after exchanging gunfire with responding officers in the church’s parking lot.

Though officials have not given a motive, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that the perpetrator was “an individual who hated people of the Mormon faith”.

Hundreds of people were attending the service at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons, in a suburb of Flint, Michigan, when the incident occurred.

Ten people suffered gunshot wounds, including two who were pronounced dead at the scene. Seven of the hospitalised victims were stable, and one was in critical condition.

Two more bodies were discovered in the church as authorities searched through the burned out rubble.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation are investigating the incident “as an act of targeted violence,” said Reuben Coleman, the acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office.

A friend of a British couple who died at a Swiss clinic for ‘assisted dying’ has raised concerns that the wife was coerced by her husband into ending her life.

Ruth Posner, 96, and her husband, Michael, 97, sent an email to friends on Tuesday announcing that by the time the message was read they would both be dead.

Julia Pascal, 75, a close friend of the couple, said that although they both openly discussed planning to take their own lives for two years, she felt that Mrs Posner, an actress, was emotionally controlled by her husband.

“Ruth was disempowered,” Pascal said. “He was very dominant. I spoke to them and sent emails, saying ‘please don’t kill yourselves’. I tried to talk Ruth out of it, but I felt it was too far gone, that she was totally under his control.”

Mrs Posner’s email account was used to send the message to friends and family stating: “The decision was mutual and without any outside pressure.”

At least 64 people have been killed in a brutal attack on a Catholic parish in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

A violent onslaught by members of the Islamist rebel group Allied Democratic Forces struck the parish of Saint Joseph of Manguredjipa in the village of Ntoyo, North Kivu province, in the dead of night.

At least 64 people were slaughtered—many of them hacked to death—while others were shot or bludgeoned. The victims had gathered for a mourning ceremony, unsuspecting and vulnerable, when machetes, firearms, and hammers were unleashed. Some attackers then set homes ablaze. Local officials say the assault was clearly premeditated.

Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has condemned the atrocity and expressed deep solidarity with the bereaved. The charity emphasises that such acts of violence are not isolated but part of a devastating pattern in eastern DRC, where Islamist militants aligned with IS-CAP (Islamic State’s Central Africa Province) operate with alarming impunity.

A new Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) curriculum for primary schools might undermine parental rights and introduce children to confusing and inappropriate concepts about gender at too young an age.

Psychotherapist Stella O’Malley has been outspoken in warning that the curriculum lacks both transparency and clarity. “The word gender is mentioned but it’s not defined,” she told the Irish Catholic, pointing out that the Department has used the phrase “sexual identity” instead of the more standard “sexual orientation.” According to O’Malley, such imprecise language risks either concealing an agenda or betraying a serious lack of understanding.

Parents, she believes, are being sidelined: “The consultation process has been little more than a tick-box exercise. Parents – not lobby groups – should be at the centre of any consultation about what children are taught.”

Adding his voice from the political sphere, Senator Rónán Mullen warned that while the Department of Education insists the curriculum is “inclusive, empowering, and deeply relevant,” in practice it risks being intrusive and manipulative. He cautioned that introducing complex ideas about sexuality and gender identity to children who may not be developmentally ready could cause harm.

The last remaining Christian town in Palestine is struggling for its survival amid increasing attacks by extremist Jewish settlers and onerous security checks by the Israeli authorities.

Fr David Khoury, the Greek orthodox parish priest of Taybeh said they are surrounded by about nine Muslim villages with whom they get on well. “We have no problem with them – only the settlers who are making trouble, mostly every day,” he told RTE’s Tony Connelly.

“With beer, 95% of the beer is water. And so when they attack these springs and they break the water pipes, the computer systems, the cameras, it limits the water that we get even more,” said his daughter and brew-master, Madees Khoury.

Settlers from a nearby hilltop village have been accused of stealing sheep, burning olive groves and attacking locals with the Israeli military randomly blocking access in and out of Taybeh.

Every aspect of the exporting process has become increasingly problematic, because everything has to be shipped through an Israeli port.

“It’s exporting, going through additional security checks for no reason, more delays getting the permits to pass through the commercial checkpoints to get to the port,” explained Madees Khoury.

Nadim believes the Israeli government is bent on annexing the West Bank and forcing out Palestinians, using settlers as a blunt instrument.

“I have a family tree of 600 years in Taybeh. I’m not going to leave my olive oil trees and my houses and my property. There is no way that I will go anywhere,” said Nadim.

Religious people self-identify as happier than non-religious people over and over again in the scientific literature, according to a leading expert on the sociology of religion.

Ryan Burge says there is no need for caveats, wiggle room or downplaying any findings. While it might be that happier people tend to be religious or that religious people tend to be happy “the upshot is still the same: religious nones are less happy than folks who identify with a faith tradition”.

As an example, he said the 2023–2024 Pew Religious Landscape Survey found those who never attend worship were the unhappiest cohort, while there is a steady increase in levels of happiness the more people do worship.

Data from the same survey found the conclusion holds true even when controlled for age and political ideology.

For example, among self-identified liberals born in the 1980s or 1990s who are non-religious and never attend a house of worship, 20% of them say that they are very happy.

For liberals born in the 1980s or 1990s who indicate that they are weekly church-attending Christians, 49% said that they were very happy.

The UK’s new Justice Secretary, David Lammy, fears that legalising ‘assisted dying’ will put pressure on some vulnerable elderly people to end their lives.

Mr Lammy was moved to the Ministry of Justice in a reshuffle earlier this month, meaning he would be partly responsible for implementing a law to enable terminally ill adults deemed to have six months or less to live to avail of assisted suicide or euthanasia. Critics oppose the bill in principle, and also say it does not contain the safeguards it claims for itself.

The former foreign secretary has previously expressed fears that his own mother would have opted for euthanasia if it had been available before she died of cancer.

Mr Lammy is expected to give evidence to a newly established Lords committee in the coming weeks, giving him an opportunity to share his personal concerns.

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, is also opposed to assisted suicide, meaning the two ministers who would have most responsibility for implementing the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, should it pass, do not agree with it.