Every morning, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things you really, really need to know as you fire up your electric heater… again.
1. #FF HEAVE: The heave that keeps on heaving. Fianna Fáil’s TDs are this weekend gauging the moods of their home constituencies, as moves get underway to hold a second vote of confidence in Brian Cowen’s leadership in as many weeks. Éamon Ó Cuív – who last week had no problem offering the Taoiseach his full support – yesterday stopped short of offering similar assurances, the Irish Independent adds.
2. #ROADS: Gardaí in Tipperary may have to ask for assistance in identifying the victims of a road accident last night, in which three men were killed after their car struck a truck on the main N8 road. The three victims are understood not to be from the locality.
3. #FIRE: Three firemen had to be treated for burns last night after a huge fire swept through a pub and a number of retail units in Stillorgan, south Dublin. 21 units of Dublin Fire Brigade were called to the Lower Kilmacud Road after the fire broke out in a disused DVD rental store. There were no civilian injuries, and the three fire officers were released shortly after midnight.
4. #AER LINGUS: Aer Lingus has said it will operate a full flight schedule this weekend, despite having dropped 140 staff from the payroll in the dispute over new staff rostering. The airline has leased new aircraft and cabin crew to cover the services that would have otherwise been affected.
5. #RED CROSS: The Irish Red Cross is to appoint a senior banker at its new secretary-general, in an attempt to end allegations of bad governance and financial irregularities. Donal Forde, who formerly led AIB’s operations in the Republic of Ireland, will take over on February 1, the Irish Times reports.
6. #COURTS: An obstetrician is to pay over €3.7m in damages to a teenage girl after she suffered brain injuries at birth in a hospital in Clonmel in 1997. The High Court found that the girl, who is severely disabled, should have been delivered by Dr Raymond Howard in theatre from 12:20am, but she was not delivered until 1am – by which time she had suffered significant brain damage.
7. #GIFFORDS: The congresswoman who doctors say was lucky to survive a gunshot wound through her brain two weeks ago has retained 100% of her mental abilities, and is to make a full recovery, it has emerged. Gabrielle Giffords was shot two weeks ago, but a friend of the congresswoman said Giffords had retained all of her faculties and, as she was moved to a rehab clinic in Texas, was expected to recover fully.
8. #HEINEKEN CUP: Leinster last night guaranteed themselves a home quarter-final in the Heineken Cup after roaring to a 36-11 victory away to Racing Metro 92. Jonathan Sexton was the hero of the night, scoring two of the side’s five tries as he finished the night with an individual tally of 21 points.
9. #WORLD WIDE WHOOPS: The internet is only a matter of days away from being full, according to one internet service provider. Hurricane Internet says that the number of unallocated IP addresses – the individual and unique numerical addresses taken up by individual internet devices – has dropped below 44 million (out of a total of 4,294,967,296) and is expected to run out within ten days. The countdown, publicised on Twitter, is part of a campaign to raise awareness and usage of an updated version of IP addresses, which would allow for 340,282,367,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (-ish) different devices to use the internet.
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