EACH WEEKDAY EVENING, TheJournal.ie brings you five stories you really should check out by 5pm.
1. #WHITEY The notorious Irish-American mobster Whitey Bulger has been captured in the US after 16 years spent on the run. It was thought at one point that the man connected to a series of ruthless killings was living in Ireland. He and longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig have been taken into custody after police and FBI surrounded an apartment building in Santa Monica, California. Here’s everything you need to know about Bulger.
2. #PEOPLE’S BANK The phrase “We own the banks” is much bandied about in Irish life at the minute but in the UK they are now proposing that when members of the public say it they can really mean it with the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg backing the idea of distributing shares in the bailed-out banks RBS and Lloyds to every British voter. We’ve been asking should a similar thing be done in Ireland? So far plenty of you think so.
3. #ECONOMY The latest figures from the CSO show that while Ireland’s Gross Domestic Product has grown by 1.3 per cent in the first quarter of this year, Gross National Product fell by 4.3 per cent. Strong exports were a feature of the latest figures but domestic demand is slow, offsetting any gains. The Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said the figures were consistent with the projections of his department.
4. #TWO MILE VEGAS Plan for a multi-million euro casino and leisure complex in Two Mile Borris in county Tipperary have been vehemently opposed by a branch of the Methodist Church which says that gambling is “a vast social disease” and argued there would be more losers than winners from the 800 acre development.
5. #STATE FAIL The latest Failed States Index has shown Somalia still top of the pile having been without an effective government in 20 years and wrecked by civil war and violence. At the other end of the scale, Ireland is ranked 171st out of the 177 countries surveyed, in a rare case of where being towards the bottom of the list is actually a good thing. We’ve rounded up the top 10 best and worst countries in the world.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say