EVERY DAY, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things we think you really ought to know with your morning cup of coffee.
1. #BAILOUT: The IMF has confirmed it is to release almost €1.5bn in new bailout funds to Ireland – just a day after the European Commission said it was to provide another €7.5bn. While the twin payouts mean Ireland is now another €9bn in debt, the IMF’s announcement comes with kind words – complementing the government for its aggressive cost-cutting action and for its reform of the banking sector.
2. #PARTY!: Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm advised his his staff to “party!” just two months before the bank was taken into state ownership, it has been reported. Extracts of Simon Carswell’s new book, published in today’s Irish Times, say Anglo spent €80,000 on a party for 600 staff just three weeks before the government had to step in and take over the failed lender.
3. #ST LUKES: The only remaining elected Fianna Fáil representative in Dublin Central has reportedly asked for a report into the ownership of St Luke’s, the house which doubled as Bertie Ahern’s constituency office and which is now used as the former Taoiseach’s private office. The Irish Times says Cllr Mary Fitzpatrick would not comment on why she has never held a constituency clinic at the building.
4. #DOCTORS: Only 15 of the 270 doctors recruited from overseas to cover the emergency shortage of junior doctors has actually been cleared for work – two months after they were recruited. The Irish Examiner cites Medical Council data which showed that only six per cent of new staff have met the criteria for registering as doctors here.
5. #CLOYNE: The Vatican’s 15-page response to the findings of the Cloyne report into clerical sexual abuse is to be published “imminently”, according to an Italian newspaper. La Stampa says Giuseppe Leanza, the outgoing Papal Nuncio to Ireland, will deliver the official response as one of his last duties before he is transferred to an equivalent role in Prague.
6. #LIBYA: The National Transitional Council is to move its offices from Benghazi to Tripoli next week – a move which effectively claims victory in the civil war aimed at unseating Muammar Gaddafi. Anti-Gaddafi fighters are now on the outskirts of Sirte, Gaddafi’s hometown and one of his last strongholds.
7. #CABLEGATE: The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has published its entire cache of US diplomatic cables online, after the full selection of over 250,000 documents was leaked elsewhere online in unedited form. The site’s four original partners have condemned the move, which sees all cables published in an uncensored and unredacted format.
8. #SPACE JUNK: A new report has recommended that NASA take immediate action to manage the amount of waste and other environmental hazards currently in orbit around the Earth – warning that the accumulating amount of space trash has reached a “tipping point” which could now pose a danger to spacecraft and satellites.
9. #BEFORE CHRIST: Controversy has arisen in Australia over moves to change the national curriculum, which abandons the historical terms “BC” and “AD” and instead replaces them with the religiously-neutral ‘BCE’ and ‘CE’. ‘CE’ refers to Common Era, comparable to AD, with ‘BCE’ then referring to the times Before Common Era.
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