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GOOD MORNING

The 9 at 9 Nine things you need to know by 9am: As hospitals are hit by the worst bed crisis in years, VHI announces price increases; Gerry Ryan’s autopsy report, and the big snow is coming back.

Every morning, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things you really need to know with your morning coffee.

1. #HEALTH CRISIS: Just a day after a record 569 people were left waiting for a hospital bed, VHI is due to announce a raft of price increases. Meanwhile the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said the bed crisis, which is the worst in five years according to its Trolley Watch, amounts to a national emergency. The Irish Times adds that hospitals have begun to reopen closed beds in a bid to relieve overcrowding in emergency departments which reached record levels yesterday.

2. #GERRY RYAN: The Star has got hold of Gerry Ryan’s autopsy report, which shows the cocaine he used before his death was laced with worming powder. Traces of the veterinary drug Levamisole were found in his system, alongside drugs to treat nausea and vomiting, stress, and sleeping tablet. The report also showed that he had only 0.05 unigrams of cocaine per millilitre of blood – which suggests he lived for several hours after he’d taken it.

3. #BRRR: Met Eireann is warning that Arctic weather conditions are set to return tomorrow, with “outbreaks of rain, sleet and snow to develop in the south of the country later in the day.” However, the last of it will clear on Saturday, and the early days of next week will bring milder weather.

4. #DRUMM: David Drumm’s bankruptcy hearing set to continue in the US today. Yesterday, it was revealed he had handed €550,000 over to his wife, the month he resigned from Anglo, as he came under intense pressure to explain how she had been able to support him during his stay in the US, various reports reveal.

5. #TONY KILLEEN: Defence Minister Tony Killeen has become the latest Fianna Fail minister to announce he won’t be standing in the next general election. Yesterday, Michael Finneran, the housing junior minister, also said he would step down.

6. #EXPATS: The government has mothballed a report calling for voting rights for non-resident Irish citizens, leaving 100,000 people who have been forced to emigrate because of the recession without a vote in the forthcoming election, the Irish Daily Mail reports.

7. #BOOKS: Irish author Maggie O’Farrell has won the Costa Award for her fifth novel, The Hand that First Held Mine.

8. #DEAD ANIMALS: The dead animals keep on coming: an estimated 2 million dead fish have now washed up in Chesapeake Bay.

9. #AMAZON: Amazon, which had claimed it would be censorship to stop selling a how-to-guide for paedophiles, before eventually giving in and pulling it under pressure from users, has had no such troubles pulling a how-to guide for authors who want to manipulate their ranking on Amazon.