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GOOD MORNING

The 9 at 9 Nine things you need to know by 9am: Britain’s Queen Elizabeth begins an historic trip to Ireland today; two devices are found in Dublin and Kildare; and IMF head detained in the Bronx’s notorious Rikers Island jail.

Every morning, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things you really need to know with your morning coffee.

1. #QUEEN: The historic visit of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth to Ireland begins today. The four-day visit is the first by a British royal in a century and will see the Queen visit places of deep significance, such as the Garden of Remembrance and Croke Park. President Mary McAleese has described the visit as an “extraordinary moment” in Irish history.

2. #DEVICES: A security alert is underway at the Blackhorse Luas stop this morning, following the discovery of a viable IED on a bus in Maynooth last night.

3. #STRAUSS-KAHN: IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been detained at the Rikers Island jail after being determined to be a flight risk following the accusation of sex crimes against him. The head of the IMF could faces up to 74 years in jail if found guilty of the serious allegations being made against him.

4. #TRIBUNAL: The Smithwick Tribunal is to resume today, marking its first hearing in over four years, RTÉ reports. The tribunal was set up to investigate allegations that two members of the gardaí had assisted the IRA in the murder of two RUC officers in 1989.

5. #JAILED: A 42-year-old man has received a 12 year jail sentence after admitting that he had ‘groomed’ his daughter, sexually assaulted and raped her, and caused her to become pregnant. His term is to run consecutively to an earlier jail term that he is serving for raping two other teenage girls, the Irish Times reports.

6. #PENSIONS: IBEC has warned that the proposed levy on pension funds would force employers to close pension schemes or cut employees’ benefits, RTÉ reports.

7. #LIBYA: The International Criminal Court is to investigate the alleged institutionalised gang rape of women in Libya. “There are rapes. The issue is who organised them,” chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told CNN.

8. #TOYOTA: A US federal judge has ruled that Toyota car owners in the United States can pursue claims that the car company caused the value of their vehicles to fall by not disclosing or fixing defects that caused unintended acceleration, reports Bloomberg.

9. #TOURISM: The new face of Tourism Ireland is Barack Obama’s distant cousin Henry Healy, who will be joined by Church of Ireland rector Stephen Neill to promote the country’s image abroad.