EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you the nine things you need to know as you begin your day.
1. #FINANCE: A report by the Financial Services Ombudsman has shown a 5 per cent rise in the number of people complaining about financial institutions in the first half of this year, while the volume of complaints being upheld has also increased by 2 per cent.
The number of complaints is expected to surge even further in the second half of the year, when the office begins to process complaints related to the IT failure at Ulster Bank.
2. #QUINN: The outgoing head of the Office of Corporate Enforcement, Paul Appleby, has said the administrators of Quinn Insurance may be able to take an action against the company’s former directors for alleged reckless trading. Appleby said this route could see the former directors being held personally liable for the debacle, which is now expected to cost upwards of €1.6 billion, RTÉ reports.
3. #BALLYMUN: Gardaí are treating as suspicious the death of a man found in north Dublin this morning. The body of the man was discovered at about 4am at a house in St Joseph’s Way in Ballymun this morning. Three other people were injured in the incident.
4. #DISSIDENT: Fourteen people have been arrested in Garda raids this morning as part of an investigation into activity at the funeral of Real IRA member Alan Ryan at the weekend. More than 200 Gardaí carried out the raids as part of Operation Ambience, which is investigating the possession and discharge of guns at Ryan’s funeral in Donaghmede.
5. #AUSTRALIA: A retired Irish priest living in Australia has been charged with the rape and sexual assault of minors in Sydney and the New South Wales Central Coast, reports the Irish Echo. Fr Finian Egan, 77, has been charged with 17 offences relating to assaults on four children which allegedly occurred between 1972 and 1987.
6. #LIBYA: United States officials are investigating whether this week’s storming of the US embassy in Benghazi was a planned attack, intended to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11, rather than a spontaneous protest to an anti-Islamic film. The US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was killed in the attack along with three other embassy staff.
7. #NETHERLANDS: The party of Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte has won a closely contested parliamentary election, with his centre-right Liberal party taking 41 seats in the 150-member lower house, while the centre-left Labour party secured 39 seats (with 96 per cent of the vote counted). The result, which saw Dutch voters reject extreme-right parties, is expected to help stabilise the euro – particularly after Germany’s approval the legality of the European Stability Mechanism yesterday.
8. #CAMBODIA: Cambodia’s war crimes court has ruled that 80-year-old leng Thirith, the so-called ‘First Lady’ of the Khmer Rouge, is unfit to stand trial for genocide because she is suffering from dementia, reports the AP. Thirith, the sister-in-law of Pol Pot, was minister for social affairs during the communist party’s vicious rule in the 1970s – when up to 2.5 million Cambodians are estimated to have died from disease, forced labour and political repression.
9. #TRAFFICKING: A new report into the scale of child trafficking in Ireland has found that a number of Irish children have been trafficked within the country for exploitative and criminal purposes. The report, carried out by researchers at University College Cork for the Children’s Rights Alliance and examined the State’s response to child trafficking in Ireland, and found that a “significant” number of children who were applying for asylum in Ireland disappeared and may have become victims of trafficking.
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