IRELAND – Simon Harris has become the youngest-ever prime minister of Ireland, officially taking office in Dublin after Leo Varadkar suddenly stepped down last month.
Harris, 37, ran unopposed to replace Varadkar as leader of the ruling Fine Gael party, and the final formalities of his rise to power were completed in the Dáil, Ireland’s parliament.
He has held a number of government positions since being earmarked as a rising political star in his late 20s, most recently serving as the minister for higher education and science.
But Harris faces a daunting political challenge in the coming months; a general election in Ireland must be held by late March 2025, and Fine Gael is trailing in opinion polls to the Irish republican group Sinn Fein, which was once the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Varadkar led a charge to liberalize some of Ireland’s socially conservative laws, most notably easing the country’s strict anti-abortion mandates.
But his government faced backlash over Ireland’s housing crisis and soaring immigration numbers.
In his first speech after being elected, Harris condemned Israel for its conduct in Gaza, vowing “not to be silent” on the war in remarks that immediately make him one of the West’s most forceful critics of Israel.
“In Gaza, we are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe. And we are seeing innocent children, women, and men being starved and slaughtered,” Harris told lawmakers in the Irish parliament. “We have not been silent on the unforgivable terrorist actions of Hamas on October the seventh. Nor can we be silent on the disproportionate reaction of the Israeli government.”
Harris has been quick to praise his predecessor during his coronation as Fine Gael’s new leader, but his path to the top of Irish politics is unlike many of those who came before him.
The son of a taxi driver, born in eastern Ireland, Harris studied journalism and French at a Dublin university but dropped out to instead focus on politics. It was his brother’s diagnosis with autism, and his subsequent struggle to access special needs services, that propelled a teenage Harris’s political ambitions.
“I saw the stress and strain my parents went through, and called a public meeting in my hometown,” he told Irish magazine Hot Press in 2022. “I ended up finding myself politicised at a young age.”
He was a councillor, and then a member of the Dail, in just a few years. And Harris’s youth has been a feature of his political identity throughout his career. Anti-abortion campaigners held up banners reading “I fancy Simon Harris” in 2018. He famously told committee members to “chillax” six years earlier. “Didn’t realise chillax was such a big deal … was just fed up!” he wrote on Twitter amid the ensuing media fascination.
And in recent months, Harris has embraced the social media app TikTok, picking up nearly 100,000 followers. Irish Times Political Correspondent Jennifer Bray told CNN that strategy could become more prominent as an election approaches, with the bloc hoping he could “appeal to an increasingly distant electorate: younger voters.”
Harris was catapulted into the prominent role of health minister in 2016, a steep rise that cemented his position as one of Fine Gael’s new guard. He was seen as a potential leadership candidate as early as the following year, when premier Enda Kenny stepped down from his role, but the then-30-year-old ruled himself out, insisting he didn’t yet have the experience.
As health minister, Harris was prominent when Ireland voted to legalize abortion. He hailed the move as “a vote to end lonely journeys, end the stigma and support women’s choices in our own country.” He also fronted Ireland’s initial response to the pandemic, before being moved to a new brief in mid-2020 — a fortuitous shift that spared the popular politician the complexities of dealing with Ireland’s emergence from the Covid crisis.
But his time in the department was not without controversy. In 2018 a scandal erupted after the Irish health service was found to have provided incorrect smear tests for cervical cancer to more than 200 women. Harris later acknowledged that he personally had made mistakes in the handling of the scandal, saying there was no part of the episode “where there are not lessons to be learned and no-one escapes responsibility.”
Harris remained as minister for further and higher education, research, innovation and science until his elevation to party leader, which capped a speedy ascent through Ireland’s political hierarchy.
“I know, in many ways, my career has been a bit odd,” he told Hot Press in 2022. “Life came at me a lot faster than I expected it to.” (CNN)…[+]

US – The parents of a Michigan teenager who shot dead four students have each been sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.
A seven-year sentence was recommended, but prosecutors asked for more.
James and Jennifer Crumbley, the first parents of a US school shooter to be convicted, appeared together for the first time in months at last Tuesday’s sentencing hearing.
Both expressed regret about their son’s attack, as their lawyers pushed to minimise their prison sentence.
In a landmark case, jurors in separate trials found each parent of shooter Ethan Crumbley guilty of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year.
Judge Cheryl Matthews said that the expanded sentence of 10 to 15 years was “to act as a deterrent” and reflected the parents’ failure to stop the attack.
“They [parents] are not expected to be psychic. But these convictions are not about poor parenting. They concern acts that could have halted a runaway train,” she told the court.
“Opportunity knocked over and over again, louder and louder, and it was ignored.”
The Crumbleys are eligible for parole after they serve 10 years in prison, but they cannot be held for more than 15 years if parole is denied.
Prosecutors had alleged that the pair had dismissed clear signs that their son’s mental health had deteriorated, and noted that the parents had bought Ethan Crumbley the gun he used in the 2021 attack.
Their son was 15 when he killed four students with a semi-automatic handgun at Oxford High School. Seven others were wounded in the shooting.
He is now serving life in prison without parole.
Last Tuesday, parents of the dead students, who were all under the age of 17, delivered emotionally charged victim impact statements in court.
Nicole Beausoleil, mother of 17-year-old victim Madisyn Baldwin, addressed Ethan Crumbley’s parents directly.
“When you were purchasing a gun for your son and leaving it unlocked, I was helping her finish her college essay,” a teary-eyed Ms Beausoleil said.
“You decided parenting wasn’t a priority,” she added. “And because of that I’ve lost my daughter.”
Jill Soave – the mother of another 17-year-old victim, Justin Shilling – was the second parent to speak. She noted that her “horror and trauma is hard to put into words”.
But she looked directly at James and Jennifer Crumbley as she slammed the parents for their “failure to act” and stop a “completely preventable” tragedy.
“If only they had done something, anything, to shift the course of events,” she said.
In a separate trial for each parent, prosecutors accused the Crumbleys of ignoring warning signs about their son’s growing mental health crisis. They accused them of being negligent by buying him a gun and not storing it properly.
Prosecutor’s sentencing recommendations were based on four separate counts of involuntary manslaughter, one for each of the four students that were killed.
During last Tuesday’s sentencing, the prosecution said James Crumbley showed a “total lack of remorse” after they read from a profanity-laden transcript of a call he made from jail. They alleged that James Crumbley had made death threats against the lead prosecutor in the case during the call.
James Crumbley’s lawyers disagreed, and said that their client only “vented” and used language that was “angry” and “not respectful”.
The shooter’s father emphasised his regret in a statement before the hearing and told the court later that he wished he had acted differently.
“I cannot express how much I wish that I had known what was going on with him or what was going to happen, because I absolutely would have done a lot of things differently.”
Jennifer Crumbley also shared her own regret to the families affected.
“I stand today not to ask for your forgiveness, as I know it may be beyond reach, but to express my sincerest apologies for the pain that has been caused,” she said in court
James Crumbley’s lawyer, Mariell Lehman, said that there was no evidence that Ethan Crumbley’s father was aware of his son’s plans.
Defence attorneys also argued that there was no legal precedent for this case, and it was inappropriate to hold the parents responsible for each person that their son killed.
Prosecutors disagreed, as did the judge.
On the day of the shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan, the Crumbleys cut short a school meeting about a disturbing drawing their son had made, instead opting to go to work and not take him home.
School staff later sent him back to class without checking his backpack, which contained the gun his parents had purchased.
An independent investigation published last year alleged multiple failures from the school system, including the decision to allow Ethan to return to class.
In response, the school district has pledged to review and improve its practices and policies.(BBC)…[+]

HAITI – Political forces in Haiti have agreed on the formation of a 22-month Presidential Transitional Council to lead the violence-torn country to fresh democratic, credible, and participatory elections through which to restore normalcy, it was reported in Port-au-Prince.
“The political agreement expresses a shared vision of the transition built by the sectors and represents a responsible commitment to the Haitian people,” read the communiqué.
The transitional body will have three priorities: “Security, constitutional and institutional reforms, and elections.” The roadmap agreed upon will be implemented by the Presidential Council in collaboration with the next consensus government to restore stability, peace, unity, and progress.
The document also sets out the guidelines for the political governance of the transition, along with its mission, vision, and the responsibilities of its institutional structures.
This transition is based on values and principles such as inclusion, citizen participation, integrity, peace, respect, and protection of national sovereignty, the document stressed.
The agreement will be signed by the parties involved and then officially transmitted to the Government through the Caribbean Community (Caricom). The regional organization acted as a mediator in the dialogue process.
None of the council members will be able to run in those elections. The new authorities will replace Ariel Henry, the questioned Haitian prime minister, who announced his resignation on March 11.
The situation has worsened since late February when outlaw gangs attacked police stations, prisons, government headquarters, and the main airport. (Merco Press)…[+]

SOUTH AFRICA – A South African court has ruled that former President Jacob Zuma can run for office in the country’s upcoming general election, overturning an earlier decision that had barred him from contesting the polls.
The Electoral Court decision paves the way for Zuma to run for president on behalf of the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK), a political organisation that he joined last year after denouncing the governing African National Congress party that he once led.
The electoral commission had earlier ruled that Zuma could not run for office due to his criminal record after it received an objection to his candidacy.
“The decision of the Electoral Commission … is set aside,” the court wrote in its ruling.
South Africa is to hold a general election on May 29 in what is expected to be the most competitive vote since the advent of democracy in 1994.
Zuma was sentenced to
15 months in jail in June 2021 after refusing to testify to a panel probing financial corruption and cronyism under his presidency.
Last Monday, his lawyers told the court the sentence did not disqualify the veteran politician as it followed civil, rather than criminal, proceedings and it had been shortened by a remission.
Jajra Omarjel, a South African political analyst, said that Tuesday’s decision was highly unexpected.
“Jacob Zuma continues to leave us in shock as he did during his nine years as the president of South Africa,” she said.
The ruling comes with the ANC struggling in the polls amid a weak economy and allegations of corruption and mismanagement.
Some opinion polls put MK at above 10 percent nationwide, a share that would make it the third or fourth political force behind the ANC and the liberal Democratic Alliance.
The party is projected to make a particularly strong showing in the battleground region of KwaZulu-Natal – Zuma’s home province.
It largely relies on the considerable political clout still wielded by Zuma, who despite scandals and corruption allegations is still popular, particularly among the country’s more than 10 million Zulus.
South Africans will be voting for a new parliament, which in turn will elect the president.(Al Jazeera)…[+]