EVERY DAY, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things you need to know with your morning cup of coffee.
1. #EQUALITY: Thousands of people are expected to join a march today in Dublin to urge the government to hold a referendum on gay marriage next year. LGBT Noise said today is also about highlighting human rights issues facing LGBT people, particularly in Russia at the moment.
2. #GARDA DEATH: A senior Sinn Féin press officer has claimed that the he knows for a fact that a well-known republican family were responsible for the killing of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe earlier this year. Mark McLernon also told the Sunday World that the family were responsible for the murders of three other men.
3. #EGYPT: Islamists in Egypt have announced fresh demonstrations for today after a tense stand-off with police at a mosque yesterday resulted in the arrests of 385 people, AFP reports. Two of the Irish citizens who were trapped in the mosque were detained by security forces and the whereabouts of their two siblings is still unknown, according to RTÉ.
4. #POPULARITY: The latest Sunday Independent Milward Brown poll has indicated that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are still almost neck-and-neck while Labour has dropped to just 5 per cent. When asked who would get the first preference vote in an election now, 37 per cent of respondents said they didn’t know.
5. #EDUCATION: Minister Ruairí Quinn is considering a range of major cuts to the education sector, according to The Sunday Business Post. Included in the list of potential cutbacks is a hike in the pupil-teacher ratio at primary level, the termination of all chaplain posts and the abolition of school book funding.
6. #CHILD BENEFIT: Fine Gael ministers are planning to put pressure on Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton to cut the amount spent on child benefit in the next budget, The Sunday Times reports. The ministers also criticised Burton over her failure to issue the promised 600,000 public service cards that are aimed at tackling benefit fraud.
7. #LENDING: Banks in Ireland have loaned just €3 million to small firms specialising in scientific research and development since 2010. The sectors that were granted the most credit from banks were agriculture and property investment and development, receiving €1.86 billion and €1.6 billion respectively in the last three years.
8. #MEXICO: Troops in Mexico have captured the head of the cocaine and marijuana-smuggling Gulf Cartel, BBC reports. The capture of Mario Ramirez Trevino is the second major success against Mexico’s leading drug cartels after the arrest last month of Miguel Angel Trevino, the head of the paramilitary Zetas cartel.
9. #HURLING: Limerick and Clare will face off this afternoon at Croke Park in what will hopefully be a classic All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship semi-final. TheScore.ie have their money on Clare but anything could happen…
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