Also in the news today, Ireland is to overhaul its asylum system after the European Parliament approved a new policy to harden the bloc’s borders . 

The HSE's planned use of St Conlon's nursing home in Nenagh continues to make news locally, as unions maintain a campaign to oppose the use of the new nursing home as a step-down facility for UHL.

Elsewhere, there's continuing coverage of Brendan Ogle's case at the WRC.

Commenting on the Cabinet appointment, ICTU has said the new Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Peter Burke needs to ensure that the labour market works for workers too, while Brian Mooney has advice for the new higher education minister Patrick O'Donovan.

Elsewhere, a new report says women in the Republic are more likely to be low paid than those in Northern Ireland.

I recommend having a read of James Bridle's piece in The Guardian today, as he explores the revelations behind Amazon's ‘AI-powered’ cashier-free shops, which had excited tech media when they launched a few years ago. As it turned out, it wasn't facial recognition technology that powered this new innovation that allowed shoppers to select items and walk out the door while an app took care of settling the bill. Instead, a thousand or so workers in India were tasked with monitoring what shoppers were putting into their baskets via CCTV. So it turns out to be just another “Mechanical Turk,” facilitating the process of helping bosses get rich by hiding underpaid, unrecognised human work behind the trappings of technology.

Zen

Your Zen moment today follows on from my recent recommendation for Ripley on Netflix. Patricia Highsmith is the author of the five novels about Tom Ripley (known collectively as the Ripliad) and is just one strand of her writing. Here's a guide on where to start with Highsmith in case you're compiling your next holiday reading list.

Have a good day.

Niall