Every afternoon, TheJournal.ie brings you five things you really need to know at 5 o’clock.
1. #GE11: With four days to go until polling, Newstalk has issued a statement saying it did not agree to preconditions with Fine Gael ahead of Enda Kenny’s interview with the station yesterday, despite comments made by one of its presenters this morning.
Chris Donoghue said on-air this morning that Kenny’s €100,000 pension relating from his teaching job – which he had taken leave from 34 years ago – “wouldn’t be spoken about, that he wouldn’t be making comments on it”.
This afternoon, however, the broadcaster insisted that “no such preconditions were in place”; neither party had sought them, and Newstalk instead believed the matter of Kenny’s pension had been addressed in a public speech given by Kenny shortly before the interview.
2. #ATHLONE: Gardaí have sealed off a house in Athlone following the arrest of a man in his 60s in connection with the disappearance of Marie Greene, 37, in Athlone last week.
The man is being questioned at Athlone Garda Station on suspicion of murder, and the property is understood to be in the Monksland area of the town.
3. #OIL: The price of Brent crude oil has jumped to its highest level since before the 2008 crisis, due to the continuing political unrest in Libya and fears that political upheaval in Iran will escalate.
The price of a barrel rose over 1.5 per cent to $104.87 a barrel this afternoon as protests continue in Libya, which exports about three-quarters of its oil to EU countries and accounts for about 10 per cent of the EU’s oil.
The increase in the price of oil means that ultimately the cost to the consumer of fuel for cars or home heating will, literally, take a hike.
4. #KOREA: South Korea believes North Korea to be preparing a third nuclear testing exercise, after reports suggested the North was digging new tunnels at the site of previous tests.
A local newspaper quoted unnamed government officials as suggesting that several new tunnels were being prepared at the North’s Punggye-ri testing site.
5. #TWITTER: Papers creating a new Irish limited company, Twitter Limited, have been filed with the Companies Registration Office – but it doesn’t look like the company is a bona fide extension of the microblogging website’s business structure.
Our examination of the documents showed that Twitter Inc doesn’t have any ownership of the new company, and that the address it’s registered to is that of an accountancy company specialising in company registrations.
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