Starting today, every afternoon TheJournal.ie brings you 5 things you really, really need to know by 5pm.

1. #COWENGATE: Just before 9am this morning – so late it didn’t make it into today’s 9 at 9 – Brian Cowen gave an interview to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland in which he sounded unusually deep-voiced, and perhaps a little the worse for wear. Along come a flurry of tweets suggesting a late night for the Taoiseach, including one from Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney.

Cowen, for his part, has rubbished any suggestions he was hungover or drunk, while his cabinet colleagues have rallied around him. Cowen says he’ll do further early-morning interviews in the future.

2. #JAIL: The official inquiry into the murder of Loyalist leader Billy ‘King Rat’ Wright has declared there to have been no ‘state collusion’ in his killing. Wright was killed in the Maze prison by INLA inmates who said he had been arranging murders while inside.

3. #TERRORISM: The ‘underwear bomber’ who tried to to blow up a plane using explosives tucked into his briefs on Christmas Day has decided to fire his lawyers and will represent himself.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, pleads ‘not guilty’ to six charges of terrorism.

4. #BANK OF IRELAND: Ratings agency Standard & Poors has downgraded its outlook for Bank of Ireland shares from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’. Moody’s did exactly the opposite only six days ago.

5. #ITALY: He just doesn’t go away, does he? Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s 73-year-old perma-tanned billionaire prime minister, has landed himself in hot water after suggesting that women were lining up to sleep with him, because he’s “loaded”, “a nice guy” and they think they will claim his inheritance if he dies while with them.

He also made an ill-advised Hitler joke:

A little after Hitler died his supporters discovered he was in fact still alive. They went to look for him to convince him to come back and he replied: ‘Yes, I will return, but on one condition… this time I will be evil, right?’

Berlusconi has shrugged off calls for an apology.