5 things you need to know today

1. Orlando gunman Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to Isis

The gun attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida which killed at least 50 people in the early hours of Sunday has been described by the US president as the deadliest mass shooting in American history. The gunman in what is the worst terror attack on US soil since the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11th, 2001 was named as Omar Seddique Mateen (29), a US citizen born in New York to Afghan parents who lived in Fort Pierce, about 120 miles southeast of Orlando. US president Barack Obama called the attack at Pulse nightclub "an act of terror and an act of hate".

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2. Brexit could mean ‘extended UK wait’ for new relationship

Britain could wait seven years to agree a new relationship with the European Union if it votes for Brexit next week, European Council president Donald Tusk has warned. In an interview with the German daily Bild today, Mr Tusk said that although Britain's exit from the EU could be negotiated within two years, agreeing new arrangements would be more complicated. "Every single one of the 27 member states as well as the European parliament would have to approve the overall result. That would take at least five years, and I'm afraid, without any guarantee of success," he said.

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3. Ireland return to Paris with a point to prove

More than six years after the drama that accompanied their World Cup exit at the hands of France, Ireland return to the Stade de France with an unrelated point to prove. Having effectively finished last at their last European Championships, they are in France first and foremost because of the expanded format and the primary aim now must be to show that they are not just, as the players like to say, here to make up the numbers. Not for the first time, Martin O'Neill has called on his squad to "make their mark" on the tournament and that might safely be translated as securing a place in the second round. Anything other than victory over Sweden, though, and that will start to look like a little more of a long shot. Four years ago, beating anyone at this level proved well beyond Giovanni Trapattoni's side, but the significant improvement shown over the second half of the qualification campaign have changed the way this team is viewed.

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4. Concerned citizen in Philip Cairns case hopes for resolution

A former community worker who went to the Garda with information about the disappearance of schoolboy Philip Cairns said she hoped it would help his mother find closure . Angela Copley, from Ballyfermot in Dublin, who supports survivors of childhood sex abuse, said that she was in contact with a woman whom Eamon Cooke had abused as a child. The latest Garda breakthrough in the case of the disappearance nearly 30 years ago focuses suspicions on the late Cooke, a former pirate radio broadcaster who was jailed in 2007 for 10 years for multiple indecent assaults of two young girls. He died earlier this month. Gardaí yesterday said the investigation remains active.

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5. UL’s ‘magic’ sponge could save billions

A research team at the University of Limerick has come up with a new class of sponge that can soak up impurities in a chemical process, desalinate water and mop up carbon dioxide right out of the atmosphere. This is no sponge you might use to clean a counter top or wash the car, it is a rigid crystalline material that can trap contaminants, explains Prof Michael Zaworotko who leads the UL research group that developed the sponge. Originally Prof Zaworotko thought he was making a sieve but in reality it ended up working like a sponge. "That is the fun part. We had a really really good plan but it failed," he said. The original plan was to develop a sieve that could help separate a waste material acetylene from a process to produce ethylene. The idea was you create sieve holes that let the ethylene through while trapping the acetylene. "It is called size exclusion," says Zaworotko, a Science Foundation Ireland research professor and Bernal Chair of Crystal Engineering at UL.

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