A couple talks at each other as the sun sets at Enoshima beach in Fujisawa, near Tokyo, Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2012. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
THESE ARE THE things you need to know as we round off the day in three easy steps.
THINGS WE LEARNED:
#QUINN: Seán Quinn’s daughter Aoife Quinn and her husband Stephen Kelly will appear on TV3′s Tonight show with Sam Smith at 11pm. During the interview, Kelly says the reason the state’s insurance compensation fund is being hit by €1.6 billion is “solely down to the company being managed terribly by administrators,” while Quinn say the family is unable to adhere to the court order to reverse the transfer of assets she expects her father will join his son behind bars.
#LEAVING CERT: It was D-Day for 55,781 students across Ireland – and 34 in Libya – who collected the results of the past year of hard work. Some 36,762 students took the ‘traditional’ Established Leaving Certificate, while 15,827 people sat the Leaving Cert Vocational Programme and 3,358 took the Leaving Cert Applied exams. Almost 11,000 students will gain 25 extra college application points when the first round of offers is distributed on Monday thanks to a bonus points initiative for students taking Higher-Level Maths.
#CHILDREN: The ISPCC has that confirmed more than 55 percent of its staff take some form of unpaid leave to cut down on costs. Nine staff members were made redundant last year and all staff were subject to salary cuts in a bid to save on running costs. Speaking to TheJournal.ie, Caroline O’Sullivan Director of Services at the ISPCC said the charity has seen a “major impact” by the recession. This week, Barnardos closed offices and services in an attempt to save money.
#DISPUTES: Almost 30 years worth of workdays (based on a five-day work week) were lost in the second quarter of 2012 in industrial disputes in Ireland, latest figures from the Central Statistics Office have revealed. In total, 7,754 days were lost to three industrial disputes, compared to just 572 for the same period in 2011, an increase of over 1,300 percent.
#PIRACY: A man in the UK has become the first person to be jailed for linking to pirated copies of TV shows and films. Anton Vickerman, from Gateshead in England, was jailed for four years for creating the website surfthechannel.com which linked to illegal versions of TV programmes and films. Vickerman was convicted on two counts of conspiracy to defraud for the site that was once among the top 500 websites visited globally.
A new born Asian elephant calf Anachli with her mother, at the official presentation at the Zoo in Berlin, Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2012. Anachli was born on Sunday, Aug. 12, 2012. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
THINGS WE LOVED:
- The seven photos, chosen from more than 12,000 entries from 6,615 photographers around the world, which made it down to the wire in the National Geographic 2012 Traveler Photo Contest.
- Total Recall going head to head… with itself. How does Colin Farrell’s new flick stack up against Arnies 1990s version? We break it down.
- Remember Scully and Mulder? Not until you see this tumblr you don’t: it will bring you right back to 1997.
THINGS WE SHARED:
- Bill Gates has seen the future, and it’s toilet-shaped: the billionaire and philanthropist is examining new loo designs that aim to improve sanitation around the world – including ones that turns waste into electricity, reports CBC News (cue endless gags about him flushing money down the toilet).
- Astronomers have observed what was until now only a theory: a galaxy cluster making news stars. Most galaxy clusters in the Universe have been labelled ’red and dead’ by scientists who thought they may have gone past their star-making phase, reports the BBC.
- Proof – as if you need it – that you cat holds you in the purest contempt imaginable:
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