EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you the nine things you really need to know as you grab that cuppa and start your day.
1. #JERSEY: A sixth person has died in a mass stabbing on the island of Jersey. A man is in custody in relation to the killing of the six, including three children, in what police called “one of the safest places in the Western world”. The last murder on Jersey was in 2004.
2. #WELFARE FRAUD: A crackdown on abuse of the social welfare system has already yielded €37m in savings, according to figures in the Irish Examiner.
3. #MISGUIDED: An ESRI study seen by the Irish Independent has found that careers guidance services in Irish secondary schools are so poor that thousands of students are signing up for the wrong college courses. The Irish Times, meanwhile, uses its own analysis ahead of Wednesday’s Leaving Cert results to find the average student has been scoring a low 305 out of 600 CAO points. And more warnings for would-be third-level students – the Union of Students in Ireland wants a Deposit Protection Scheme to protect students from rogue landlords…
4. #COLD CASES: A convicted paedophile in the UK has been interviewed by gardai in relation to the unsolved abduction and murder of 10-year-old Bernadette Connolly in Sligo in 1970, according to the Irish Daily Mail. Meanwhile, the Times reports that French police are set to descend on west Cork and interview up to 30 people in relation to the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier near Schull in 1996.
5. #IRAQ: Over 40 people have been killed this morning in a twin bombing in the Iraqi city of Kut, according to AP. One bomb was contained in a freezer and the second in a parked car.
6. #LIBYA: Col Muammar Gaddafi has released an audio message to Libyans, vowing to fight “to the death”. Rebel forces have entered the strategically-important town of Zawiya which is just 50kms west of Tripoli.
7. #PENSIONS: Grey power has surged again as angry pensioners demand to meet Finance Minister Michael Noonan in relation to a 10 per cent cut envisaged in their payments from the private Tara Mines pension plan, according to the Independent and the Times.
8. #GOOD FAT: Even with all the warnings about childhood obesity, it appears there is such a thing as “good fat” in children. The unhappy news for overweight kids from the Journal of Pediatrics is that this “good fat” – which burns energy rather than storing it – is more prevalent in thinner children.
9. #WHAT A SHOWER: Did you catch a glimpse of the Perseid meteor shower this weekend? We bet you didn’t catch it from this angle – this was the picture posted on Twitter by NASA astronaut Ron Garan (@Astro_Ron) yesterday of “what a ‘shooting star’ looks like #FromSpace”:
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