EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you the nine things you need to know as you start your day.
1. #ABORTION The Fianna Fáil parliamentary party is to meet today to discuss the proposed abortion bill. An anti-abortion group, SPUC, has said the Protection of Life During Preganancy bill is “worse than Britain’s 1967 act”. Meanwhile, the family of Savita Halappanavar have issued a statement saying they do not wish to “indulge in Irish politics” or interfere with the debate. They say in the Daily Mail they do not see any improvement for Irish women now or in the future with or without this legislation.
2. #PRISON OFFICERS Prison officers have said that they will consider taking industrial action if further cuts are imposed on them. RTÉ says that the Prison Officers’ Association, which begins its annual conference in Athlone today, recommends officers go on strike if the Government imposes more pay cuts on them.
3. #ANTHONY LYONS An appeal against the leniency of the sentence given to businessman Anthony Lyons for attacking a young woman may not reach the courts until 2015, the Irish Daily Mail says today. It says that prosecutors appealing against his sentence were told yesterday that a backlog means the case won’t be heard for another two years.
4. #JOBS The Waterford-based company FeedHenry has announced a plan to create 100 new jobs by 2015. A provider of cloud-based mobile enterprise application solutions, it secured €7m in funding and plans to create the jobs in its Waterford and Dublin offices.
5. #COLLISION A 15-year-old girl died when she was out walking with a friend and was hit by a car last night. Police say that the collision occurred at Ros A Mhil, Galway at around 9.45pm. The other pedestrian and the male driver of the car were uninjured.
6. #RENT Rent is rising in Dublin more than anywhere else, according to the latest information from Daft.ie. Its quarterly report shows that the average national rent is up 2.7 per cent from a year ago, which is a third consecutive quarterly rise for the first time since 2007. The reason for the gap between Dublin and the rest of the country is lack of supply.
7. #BOSTON Three people have been charged with being involved in the cover-up of the Boston Marathon bombings. The three are 19-year-olds who were friends of one of the alleged bombers and were charged with trying to cover Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s tracks by throwing out fireworks and a laptop and then lying to US police.
8. #NEW MONEY The new €5 note has entered circulation in Ireland and across the euro area today. It is part of the Europa series of notes which are being phased in over the next few years. The same size as the older note, and similar in appearance, it includes new security features, including a watermark of the Greek goddess Europa.
9. #NORTH KOREA A US citizen has been sentenced to 15 years of prison labour for “hostile acts” against the communist regime. Pae Jun-Ho, known in the US as Kenneth Bae, was arrested in November as he entered the city of Rason. He has been accused of trying to “topple the DPRK [North Korea]“. US officials said he entered the country on a valid visa.
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