EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you the nine stories you need to know as you kick off your day.
1. #JOBS: Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton has welcomed the announcement from financial services company Aviva that the job losses at the company will be fewer than previously announced, and that it is to create an additional 220 jobs in Galway. The company had announced 770 job losses in October, but staff will be told later this morning that the figure is between 500 and 550, according to RTE.ie.
2. #MISSING: A search has resumed this morning for a baby who went overboard from a ferry in Belfast Lough yesterday evening. The baby is believed to have fallen from the ferry along with its mother, who was subsequently rescued and is being treated for suspected hypothermia. The ferry had arrived from Scotland and was preparing to dock at Belfast Harbour when the alarm was raised just after 6pm last night.
3. #OBAMA: Barack Obama has become the first US president to declare his full support for gay marriage, saying that it was “important for me personally to go ahead and affirm that same-sex couples should be able to get married”. In an interview on US television, Obama said he had hesitated on the issue because he had previously thought that civil unions were sufficient rather than full marriage rights.
4. #SMOKING BAN: The Health Minister has said he will not oppose a bill proposed by a group of Senators to ban smoking in cars when children are present. James Reilly raised some concerns in relation to the drafting of the bill but one of the Senators who proposed the bill said that these concerns could be worked out. The bill was brought before the Seanad last night by senators John Crown, Jillian van Turnhout and Mark Daly.
5. #FINE: A major hospital is facing a fine of up to €1.75 million over its failure to cut waiting list times. The new special delivery unit of the HSE is to introduce fines of €25,000 for every month a patient is waiting more than one year for a planned in-patient procedure, the Irish Examiner reports, in a bid to tackle Ireland’s waiting lists of around 200,000 people.
6. #DEATHS: Postmortems are due to be carried out today on the bodies of twin brothers discovered at a flat in Limerick city yesterday afternoon. The brothers, who were in their 20s, were discovered at the apartment on Steamboat Quay in the centre of the city.
7. #BULLYING: A garda who worked on the investigation into the death of Latvian woman Baiba Saulite who was shot dead outside her home in Dublin is suing Garda authorities for alleged bullying and harrassment. The Irish Examiner reports that Garda Declan Nyhan also alleges he was not paid while he was on sick leave. The claims are denied by Garda authorities.
8. #CRASH: The wreckage of a Russian Superjet plane which disappeared over Indonesia yesterday has been found at the side of a cliff near a dormant volcano. The jet, which was carrying 47 people, went off radar during a test flight yesterday afternoon. There is little hope that any survivors will be found.
9. #NO LIMBS, NO LIMITS: She’s already spoken at a United Nations technology conference but Cork teenager Joanne O’Riordan has big plans for what she wants to do next – including finally getting the robot she wants, visiting a princess from Saudi Arabia, and possibly even getting a song recorded by One Direction. Her brother has been telling TheJournal.ie everything that’s happened in the few weeks since the UN conference.
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