Busker Jack Doyle draws a crowd on Dublin’s Grafton Street today. (Photo: Sam Boal/Photocall Ireland)

THESE ARE THE things you need to know as we round off the day in three easy steps.

THINGS WE LEARNED

#MORTGAGES: Good news for people with tracker mortgages: the ECB has cut interest rates by 0.25 per cent. Less good news for people with standard variable rate mortgages though: Ulster Bank is cutting its rate but most other banks saying they’re ‘reviewing the situation’.

#COLD DEAD HANDS: The CEO of Ulster Bank has said that up to 600,000 people are affected by the ongoing technical problems at the bank. Jim Brown also refused to say if he will return his bonus at the end of the year or not.

#MURDER PROBE: Police in Northern Ireland are to launch a murder investigation into Bloody Sunday, forty years after British soldiers shot dead unarmed people attending a civil rights march. The investigation could take up to four years and will involve up to 30 officers.

#GHOST ESTATES: Want to take a guess at how many ghost estates there are in Ireland? Just over 2,000, according to new research from the Department of the Environment.

#AIR FRANCE: French investigators say inadequately trained pilots coupled with faulty equipment caused an Air France jet to plunge into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, killing all 228 people on board. Three Irish doctors died in the crash.

#BANK GUARANTEE: Who was in Government Buildings on the night of 29 September 2008? What did the the Cabinet know? The Public Accounts Committee has compiled a list of questions that it wants answered about the bank guarantee – here are just a few of them.

THINGS WE LOVED

• So this frog has been named after Prince Charles because apparently they share the same genetic structure. Kidding. It’s in recognition of his charity work to protect their rainforest homes. Go Charles.
• Controversial argument from Slate: Is the era of the iPhone over?
• These gorgeous vintage posters from Aer Lingus’s Pinterest page hark back to an age when air travel was glamorous and relaxing (thanks for ruining that for us, Ryanair).
• The ISPCA sent us these photos of two West Highland Terriers in Portlaise whose coats had been left neglected, leaving them matted and unkempt. The dogs, AJ and Skully, got their much-needed haircuts (and a good wash) and are now back to their old, slightly-less-furry selves. Aw.

(Images: ISPCA)

THINGS WE SHARED

• Continuing the somewhat unprecedented animal theme of tonight’s Fix, are you follow Anti-Joke Cat (Tagline: “I don’t do jokes”) on Twitter? If not, reconsider. With just 183 tweets its already garnered over 100,000 followers. Here’s some sample tweets:

• As Katy Perry once said: “Baby, you’re a firework”. Even if she was factually inaccurate, she may have appreciated this video, in which a guy attached a camera onto fireworks and then collated the results.

(Video: jeremiahjw/YouTube)