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Belfast drive-by shooting, Home Sweet Home plans mass movement and drink-driving arrests

A man aged 36 has been arrested after a policeman was shot in a drive-by attack in north Belfast, the PSNI has said.

The community officer was injured in the arm at a filling station in an attack being blamed on dissident republicans.

He is stable in hospital. Police appealed for public support as they opened a major investigation.

The Home Sweet Home group will build a mass movement of citizens to change housing policy in the way the Right2Water campaign "beat" water charges, the group's co-founder Brendan Ogle has said.

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The movement will be “multi-stranded” – legal, political and campaigning – to challenge the “broken policies which favour banks, vulture funds and put property before the most basic needs of people”.

Mr Ogle, education officer with the Unite trade union, described the group’s 28-day occupation of Apollo House – a vacant Nama-managed office block in Dublin 2 – to accommodate homeless people as the “most stressful but most rewarding thing” he had done in more than two decades of activism.

Derelict shops and other commercial units could be converted into homes and apartments without needing planning permission under proposals in the Government’s plan to revitalise rural Ireland.

The so-called "Action Plan for Rural Ireland", to be set out today in Ballymahon, Co Longford, by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, will contain measures aimed at rejuvenating rural areas of the State, including towns, villages and regional cities.

One of its aims is to “make rural Ireland a better place in which to live and work by revitalising our town and village centres”.

Fiach Kelly reports here:

Samsung Electronics indicated on Monday that its latest flagship Galaxy S smartphone could be delayed as it pledged to enhance product safety following an investigation into the cause of fires in its premium Note 7 devices.

Wrapping up its months-long probe into the cause of the Note 7 debacle, the world’s top smartphone maker said faulty batteries from two suppliers were to blame for a product failure that wiped $5.3 billion off its operating profit.

Samsung mobile chief Koh Dong-jin said procedures had been put in place to avoid a repeat of the fires, as investors look to the launch of the South Korean tech giant’s first premium handset since the Note 7, the Galaxy S8, some time this year.

Almost 1,000 motorists were arrested on suspicion of drink-driving during the Christmas and the new year period, a significant increase on the previous year.

Figures released by Tánaiste and Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald show that between December 1st and January 8th, a total of 961 people were detained on suspicion of drink-driving.

Statistics for the previous December show a total of 576 people were detained on suspicion of being intoxicated while driving.