EVERY EVENING, TheJournal.ie brings you a round-up of the day’s main news, as well as the bits and pieces you may have missed.

• Junior Minister John Perry has defended abruptly hanging up the phone during an interview with regional radio station Ocean FM today during a discussion on Sligo cancer services. Perry told TheJournal.ie: “I said what I said and I had nothing else to add.”
• Taoiseach Enda Kenny has admitted to weeping with emotion every time he sees Riverdance. “Ancient dance translated into a phenomenal and powerful message,” is how he described the show.
• Something else to weep over: Ireland may not be able to return to international debt markets until 2018, unless it defaults or gets another EU-IMF loan, according to a report in the Guardian. Meanwhile, Minister Leo Varadkar has claimed the Sunday Times article in which he was quoted as saying Ireland could need another bailout was “hyped up”.
• In better news, Minister Richard Bruton said today that around 310 new jobs will be created in start-up firms supported by the government. However, no details have been provided on when those jobs will come about. In the meantime, a new Aircoach route servicing Dublin Airport will create 13 jobs.
• Tax receipts for the first five months of the year were up 5.6 per cent, or €677 million, on the same period of last year, according to figures released today by the Department of Finance. However, overall the Exchequer returns were down €178 million on what the department had expected for the period.
• Spaniards have taken to the streets of major cities in Spain over the country’s high unemployment. Niamh Kelly asks, why aren’t the Irish this angry?
• Grand Rapids in Michigan, which was included in Newsweek’s list of dying US cities earlier this year, has struck back at its detractors with this video campaign showcasing just how lively it can be. At almost ten minutes, it’s a long one, but worth watching for its huge cast of locals which includes dancers, fire engines, a wedding, football teams, mass lip-synching and a pyrotechnic show on a bridge:

• The deadly E.coli outbreak which has killed 18 people and left hundreds more ill is a new strain that has never been seen before, according to the World Health Organisation.
• The Vintners Federation of Ireland has launched a new campaign to help save the Irish pub. We’ve been asking what you think should be done to save it – or if you think anything should be done.
• Customs officers and armed gardaí have uncovered a major fuel laundering plant in Castleblayney, Co Monaghan. The officers seized 37,000 litres from the plant, believed to be capable of laundering around 20 million litres a year, at a potential cost of €11m to the Exchequer.
• People in Egypt have been angered by what appears to be a Vodafone ‘empowerment’ ad, according to Storyful. Vodafone denies it is an official production. Parts of a Vodafone ad aired before the protests which led to the resignation of former president Hosni Mubarak have been re-edited to present the phone company as the impetus behind the revolution, according to angry complainants. Here’s the controversial ad in question:

• It’s almost the bank holiday weekend, so it seems a good time for a gratuitous slideshow of cute baby Dublin Zoo animals.
• Nobel Prize-winning author VS Naipual has said women writers will never be his equal and that after reading “a paragraph or two” of someone’s writing, he can tell if it was penned by a man or a woman. The Guardian decided to test this claim out on its readers with the following quiz.
• Leaked US Embassy cables given by WikiLeaks to the Irish Independent show that the embassy officials in Ireland had meetings with senior government officials in which the government admitted having no clear plan to rescue the economy.
• Mitt Romney announced his intention to run for the US presidency as a Republican candidate today. Former Republican vice-presidential nominee and possible presidential candidate for 2012 Sarah Palin narrowly avoided being caught up by a deadly cluster of tornadoes in Massachusetts last night.
• Poll: Do you agree with Taoiseach Enda Kenny that the US President and Queen Elizabeth made Irish the world’s “sexiest language”? Kenny made the remark last night at the launch of the RTÉ book, The Week in Politics Election 2011. Is Enda right?

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