EVERY DAY, TheJournal.ie brings you a round-up of all the day’s main news as well as the bits and pieces that you may have missed.

• Ireland has said that it will support France’s Christine Lagarde in her bid to become the next managing director of the International Monetary Fund – regardless of the country’s attitude on Ireland’s corporate tax rate.
• It has been revealed that the Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan was invited to attend an IMF course three days after pre-bailout correspondence began.
• Journalists and other workers at the 183-year-old Connaught Telegraph newspaper in Mayo are planning a strike over plans to relocate pre-press production to Mullingar.
• Dublin MEP Gay Mitchell has confirmed that he will seek the Fine Gael nomination to run for the Presidential elections.

• Tributes have poured out today for former Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, who passed away this morning. Lenihan, who had been suffering from pancreatic cancer, was described as “one of life’s really good guys” and “a genuine public servant who did his very best in dire times”. He is survived by his wife and two children, his mother, his three brothers and his sister.

• Despite media reports that US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords might recover from being shot in head last March, her chief of staff told an Arizona newspaper today that she is likely to spend the rest of life recovering form her brain injuries.
• After almost six years of negotiations, Croatia has been given the green light to join the EU. Accession could happen as early as 2013.
• Protesters in the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh say Israeli forces have launched tear gas attacks on children during a peaceful demonstration today.
• As thousands flee Syria in the face of escalating violence, activists say at least 21 people have been killed in protests and army operations across the country today.
• A new immigration law in Alabama, described as the toughest in the US, has made it a crime to give an immigrant a lift in a car.
• Yesterday’s Les Paul Google Doodle proved such a hit that Google left it there for another day. Here’s some basic tunes to practice.

It’s a (mostly) beautiful June day, so what about a bit of poetry? Seek out a shaft of sunlight, sit down and take in Gabriel Byrne’s rendition of The Lake Isle of Inishfree. Or, if Benicio del Toro is more to your taste, you can listen to him recite the words of George Bernard Shaw… (more at Imagine Ireland Arts).

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