Every day, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things you really need to know with your morning coffee.
1. #PENSIONS: Some of the country’s highest earners and company owners could escape the levy on private pensions that forms part of the new jobs initiative. The Irish Times reports that ‘approved retirement funds’ – which tend to deal with the transfer of assets rather than cash – will escape the 0.6 per cent levy.
2. #NURSE: 25 people who attended a sexual assault treatment unit in Letterkenny have been contacted by the HSE after it emerged that a nurse working there had been removed from the register two years ago. RTÉ News says her continued employment, despite her removal from the register, may have compromised some of the legal evidence collected from individuals attending it.
3. #EXPENSES: The president of Waterford IT is up for reappointment at the WIT Governing Body today – just as fresh revelations emerge about his expenses for the last seven years. The reappointment vote has already been deferred – but now education minister Ruairí Quinn says the Higher Education Authority wants a report on Professor Kieran Byrne’s spending. Among his offices expenses since 2004 are €100,000 on taxis.
4. #HOSPITAL: The troubled National Paediatric Hospital – which has already lost two chairmen – is now set to lose its CEO, before construction on the project even begins. The Irish Times reports that Eilish Hardiman has been appointed chief executive of Tallaght Hospital, meaning she will vacate her role with the national hospital – which is set for the site of the Mater Hospital, a location currently under review.
5. #ALCOHOL: The barmen who are facing manslaughter charges for serving an Englishman who later died of alcohol poisoning have told a court they would not have served him a glass containing eight shots of spirits if they thought he was drinking it alone. Gary Wright and Aidan Dalton said they thought the glass was being shared – but Graham Parish knocked back the drink himself.
6. #BIN LADEN: Journals seized by the United States from Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad reveal that bin Laden was planning a major attack for the tenth anniversary of September 11 – and that he was becoming frustrated at how attacks following 9/11 were not having the same impact.
7. #NEIL LENNON: A man has been arrested by police in Edinburgh after attacking Celtic manager Neil Lennon in the middle of a game. Lennon was celebrating Celtic’s second goal in a 3-0 win at Hearts last night when the man emerged from the crowd and attacked the Celtic manager, who has previously been the target of parcel bomb attacks.
8. #LIBYA: He’s not dead yet, it seems. Libyan state TV has aired new footage of Muammar Gaddafi apparently meeting senior officials in Tripoli – ending two weeks of speculation that he may have been killed in a strike on his compound. “We tell the world: these are the representatives of the Libyan tribes,” Gaddafi tells the camera, while a background TV shows yesterday’s date.
9. #iMASS: There’ll be no excuse for turning down an invite to a communion or wedding shortly, if a new Church TV service takes off. The Church Service TV initiative has been rolled out in 15 parishes in Dublin and Cork – with the Irish Examiner explaining that its live streams of proceedings at churches is also available as an on-demand archive, like a “mini-YouTube for each parish”.
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