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Balloon seller Mahfouz Bahbah, 12, at a roadside in Afghanistan
# Daily Fix
The Daily Fix: Tuesday
In tonight’s Fix: RTÉ stars face a large pay cut; Irish ex-pats get their say in the Áras race; and a war of words at the World Scrabble Championships.
EVERY EVENING, TheJournal.ie brings you a roundup of the day’s main news – as well as any bits and pieces you may have missed.
In the race for the Áras…
- Martin McGuinness has insisted that he does not know the identities of those responsible for the 2004 Northern Bank robbery. He said he knew “absolutely nothing” about the £26.5million heist, adding that he could not have worked with unionists at Stormont if they “thought we were liars”.
- Irish people abroad will be able to vote for the presidential candidates – but only in a mock election hosted by Ballotbox.ie. The organisation opened registration for its online poll today in a bid to highlight the disenfranchisement felt by Irish ex-pats.
- Mary Davis has acknowledged that her reputation was damaged by publicity around her positions on State boards. However, she said her opponents had drawn attention to the board memberships because they saw her presidential campaign as a serious threat.
- All seven candidates have been going head-to-head in the TG4 presidential debate tonight – and we’ve been keeping you informed on all the action on our live blog.
In the day’s other news…
- Top stars at RTÉ could be looking at a pay cut of up to 30 per cent – even if they threaten to jump ship to commercial stations. That’s the message from the broadcaster’s director general Noel Curran, who also said that staff numbers would fall by 300 from 2008 levels.
- Twenty-two children died while known to State care services in just nine months last year, according to new figures released by the HSE. Four of those deaths were cases of suicide.
- Proposed changes to the Junior Cert system – which could include limiting the exams to eight subjects – risk having “disastrous” effects on students, one teacher’s union has said.
- Around one thousand staff at insurance giant Irish Life have begun a ballot on whether to take industrial action, amid fears for their jobs if the State-owned company is restructured and sold to a private buyer.
- The richest woman in Europe, L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, has been declared mentally unfit to manage her $20billion fortune. The result comes after a legal battle with Bettencourt’s estranged daughter, who claimed her mother was being cheated out of her money.
- Ireland’s offshore oil and gas reserves have been the subject of considerable controversy, with some saying the State should take a bigger hand in exploiting them. This wouldn’t do us any favours at all, argues Simon Tuohy today on TheJournal.ie.
- Should the government raise taxes on cigarettes? The Irish Heart Foundation today called for a €1 hike in the price of a 20-pack – but the proposal has come under fire from retailers.
- Scrabble is normally such a civilised affair – but the tiles were flying at the World Championships as one player accused another of hiding letters. Chollapat Itthi-Aree even demanded that his opponent be strip-searched to find the missing ‘G’.
- And finally, the ‘five a day’ message must have really hit home with this black bear cub – who set out for his local supermarket in Alaska to stock up on fruit and veg…
