An installation by Chinese artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu at the opening of an exhibition called China China at the Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev, Ukraine today. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsy)

HERE ARE THE things we learned, loved and shared today as we round off the day in three easy steps.

THINGS WE LEARNED

#BUS ÉIREANN: Executives at Bus Éireann face pay cuts and a longer working week under proposals agreed between management at the company and unions after lengthy negotiations. SIPTU said several issues at the centre of the dispute which provoked a two-day strike have now been resolved, and Bus Éireann said the cost-saving measures will help protect the jobs of its 2,500 employees.

#INTERNET: A High Court judge has ordered a group of experts to see if it is possible to remove a video which falsely accuses an Irish student of not paying a taxi fare from the internet. The judge said student Eoin McKeogh had been subject to “vile, crude, obscene and generally obnoxious comments” after he was mistakenly identified as being a fare dodger.

#PROPERTY: Businessman and former property developer Breifne O’Brien has failed in his bid to have his trial on charges of theft and deception stopped over adverse media publicity which he claimed could prejudice the hearings. The judge agreed to delay the case for 12 months to allow reporting on O’Brien’s financial affairs fade from public memory before a jury is sworn in.

#PENALTY POINTS: Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan has defended an internal Garda investigation into the cancellation of penalty points and said he is very satisfied that the team left no stone unturned in its investigation. Speaking in front of the Oireachtas today, the Commissioner said that road traffic matters were a discretionary issue for Gardaí.

#END IT LIKE BECKHAM: David Beckham has announced he is to retire from football at the end of this season. The 38-year-old turned down a one-year extension at club Paris Saint-Germain, saying he felt now is the right time to finish his career while he is still playing at the highest level.

#IT’S BACK: Some (unexpected) good news: a medieval sculpture stolen from the grounds of a Meath church last month has been returned to its original position. Locals reported seeing two jeeps driving up to the grounds in the early hours of the morning before unloading the 15th century baptismal font.

THINGS WE LOVED

(Image: Houghton Library/Harvard)

• This is one for all the Star Trek fans out there (old school fans, not the Johnny-come-latelys who only started watching when JJ Abrams started doing the films). This excerpt comes from a writers’ guide for the original series which explains how episodes were crafted (“We tantalize the audience with a promise of excitement to come…”) in order to help nail the tone and content of a typical episode. You can see more pages from it over at Slate.
• Loneliness may be a the next public health crisis in the US – at least, so says this thoughtful and in-depth essay from New Republic, which looks at how loneliness has moved from being a social problem (especially for old people) to something else.
• It’s one of the largest, longest, widest, tallest and most expensive passenger liners in the world – and the Queen Mary II spent most of today docked in Dún Laoghaire.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny officially switches on Eircom’s fibre network at the company’s head quarters in Dublin today. (Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire)

THINGS WE SHARED

• Good news, thumbers (that’s a word, right?). You can now change your mind about how you feel about comments on TheJournal.ie.
• There is something very sinister and almost sci-fi-esque about this video of a sandstorm advancing over Rafh, a town in Saudi Arabia, as seen from a plane flying just above it. Looks like we’re not the only ones to think so: it’s gotten more than 210,000 views in the three days since it was put up on YouTube:

(Video: JacekP/YouTube)

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