EVERY DAY, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things we think you really ought to know with your morning cup of coffee.
1. #SHOOTING: A man has died after being shot at a halting site in Ballymun yesterday evening. The 49-year-old was shot shortly before 10pm last night and died a short time later at the Mater Hospital.
2. #CLOYNE: The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has told the Sunday Independent there may be a “cabal” of people inside the Catholic Church who are deliberately blocking efforts to report cases of suspected child abuse. The comments come the day after the Vatican issued its response to the findings of the Cloyne Report.
3. #WATERFORD: Gardaí in Waterford are investigating a suspicious death in the city last night. A woman was found badly injured on the city’s outer ring road shortly after midnight, and was pronounced dead at Waterford Regional Hospital. A 29-year-old man has been arrested.
4. #RACE FOR THE ÁRAS: There’s some good news for Michael D Higgins this morning, who leads the presidential field in no fewer than two opinion polls today. The Sunday Independent/Millward Brown poll gives him 32 per cent support (an 8-point lead over Gay Mitchell) while the Sunday Times’ Behaviour & Attitudes survey puts him at 35 per cent, 12 points clear of Fine Gael’s Mitchell.
5. #PUBLIC SECTOR: The public sector could be facing a major staff shortage in six months’ time, with thousands of employees set to retire before the government taxes their lump-sum pension allowances. The Sunday Business Post estimates the figure to be 8,500, while the Sunday Times says 9,000 staff could go.
6. #MORTGAGES: Fianna Fáil’s finance spokesman Michael McGrath has told the Sunday Times that the worsening economic situation may mean that banks are only barely capitalised to absorb a wave of domestic mortgage defaults – while writing in today’s Sunday Independent, Bord Snip chairman Colm McCarthy reckons the wave of defaults would be worse than that allowed for in the stress tests.
7. #GAZA: Turkey has decided to expel the Israeli ambassador and initiate action with the International Court of Justice over Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza. Turkey believes the blockade to be in breach of international law, while an Israeli minister told CNN that Turkey’s actions were “strange” and said the “lack of co-operation” was just as damaging to Turkey as it was to Israel itself.
8. #BEST OF THREE: Hurling fans from across the country are hitting the roads for Croke Park this morning, as the All-Ireland hurling finals take place at GAA headquarters. Dublin and Galway face off in the minor decider at 1:15pm, ahead of the eagerly-awaited decider between champions Tipperary and revenge-seeking Kilkenny at 3:30pm. Our pals at TheScore.ie will have live coverage, and have put together this preview of how the day might pan out.
9. #EX FACTOR: TV3 has told the Sunday Times that Vincent Browne’s Friday night chat show, billed as an alternative to the Late Late Show, will not be returning this autumn – with the US edition of The X Factor instead taking the spot. Browne’s show lasted just 15 weeks – co-incidentally, the same number of weeks that the ill-fated Dunphy Show ran for in 2003.
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