Every morning, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things you really need to know with your morning coffee.
1. #WIKILEAKS: Sinn Féin leaders ‘were aware of’ Northern Bank heist plans at a time when they were involved in lengthy negotiations to save the peace process, the former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern believed. Leaked diplomatic cables, published in today’s Guardian, show Ahern judged Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to be part of military command and aware of IRA plans for £26.5m robbery. The leaked document also reveal that MI5 offered to hand over files on the killing of solicitor Pat Finucane, revelations which seem to strengthen his family’s demands for an inquiry into collusion with security forces.
The documents also claim that the IRA used the Irish boom to turn ‘respectable’, buying up properties in London, Dublin and Spanish resorts.
2. #AIB: Speaking on RTE’s Morning Ireland, Labour’s Pat Rabbitte has called for the resignation of the board of AIB over revelations published in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post that AIB did not file a defence to the case taken by employees over unpaid bonuses.
3. #BAILOUT: The Labour party and Fine Gael have said they will be voting against the IMF/EU bailout package when it comes before the Dail on Wednesday. However, with the backing of independents, the vote looks likely to pass, the Irish Times reports.
4. #ANGLO: Anglo’s €35 billion bailout is not enough, because it doesn’t take mortgage defaults into account, the bank’s chairman Alan Dukes has claimed. He was speaking ahead of Wednesday’s Dáil vote on the rescue package, worth a total of €85bn, the Examiner reports.
5. #GERRY RYAN: The inquest finding that cocaine use contributed to the death of the broadcaster means his family now fear they may lose their home, the Independent reports.
6. #UH-OH: Developer Sean Dunne hasn’t been making a good impression on his new neighbours. The developer has been branded a “pariah” and an “Irish refugee” in a profile published in the Greenwich Time, the local newspaper of the exclusive Connecticut enclave where he lives, the Irish Independent reveals. Meanwhile, his wife Gayle Killilea has been warning that she will sue any media outlets that breach her privacy, insisting in a legal statement that her “marital affairs, her place of residence and her finances are not legitimate matters of public interest”, the Herald reported recently.
7. #SWEDEN: Police in Britain have been searching a property in the UK as part of the investigation into the weekend bombing in Sweden, in which one man died. The search comes after the Daily Telegraph disclosed that a man who had studied and lived in Luton, Bedfordshire, north of London, is thought to have been behind Saturday’s blasts. One man – whom investigators suspect may have been the bomber – was killed in the blasts, while a separate explosion nearby injured two people. Islamist website Shumukh al-Islam named Taymour Abdel Wahab as the man responsible for the explosions, which Sweden has said it is probing as a “terrorist crime.”
8. #AMAZON: The online retailer Amazon went down for more than half an hour last night, in what the company insisted was a hardware failure in its European data centre network – and not as a result of Operation Payback, the cyber war spearheaded by supporters of Julian Assange.
9. #ASSANGE: Assange is at the centre of yet another storm of embarrassing allegations this morning – only this time, the focus is on him. Details of an ad he reportedly place on a dating website under the pseudonym Harry Harrison have been uncovered by website Reddit. In the ad, which was last accessed on January 1 2007, he writes: “WARNING: Want a regular, down to earth guy? Keep moving. I am not the droid you’re looking for. Save us both while you still can”, adding that he is a “passionate, and often pig headed activist intellectual [who] seeks siren for love affair, children and occasional criminal conspiracy”. The ad continues:
I like women from countries that have sustained political turmoil. Western culture seems to forge women that are valueless and inane. OK. Not only women!…You should message me if you are a spirited, erotic, non-confomist. Non-conformity is not the adoption of some pre-existing alternative subculture. I seek innate perceptiveness and spunk. Do not write to me if you are timid. I am too busy. Write to me if you are brave.
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