Ken Fanning and Tina Segner of Tumble Circus and their award-winning show ‘THIS IS WHAT WE DO FOR A LIVING’ opens today for one week only at Smock Alley Theatre Boys’ School as part of Absolut Fringe. (Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland)

HERE ARE THE things  you need to know as we round off the day in three easy steps.

THINGS WE LEARNED

#CONSULTANTS: After intensive negotiations over the weekend, hospital consultants and the HSE struck a deal in the early hours of this morning on most but not all matters as the Health Minister James Reilly said that new consultants face hefty pay csut. Here’s the details.

#TOPLESS PICS: The furore over the topless pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge appearing in the Irish Daily Star continues with new Irish privacy legislation set to the examined as this evening the editor of the paper, Michael O’Kane, was suspended.

#CONSUMERS: Good and bad news for some consumers today. The bad news first is that prices for Bord Gáis electricity are going up but if you’re thinking about picking UPC for your internet then you may be interested in their doubling of broadband speeds.

#PETROL BOMB: The first day of the Sinn Féin think-in in Dublin has been marred by news that TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh’s constituency office has been the subject of a petrol bomb attack.

#DRUGS: €800,000 of psychoactive drugs have been seized in Waterford today. The 23 kilogrammes of synthetic psychoactive drug had been sent from China and was monitored as it arrived at Cork Airport today.

#COUGH SYRUP: Pharmacists are warning the country’s chemists to be wary of the potential abuse of cough syrup products saying that they could be used make drugs such as crystal meth.

THINGS WE LOVED

• Judging by the pre-orders there is plenty of excitement about the iPhone 5 but we like these 7 things you could buy instead of Apple’s new smartphone.
• If you’ve seen The Social Network you will be more than familiar with the Winklevoss twins who claim to have originally had the idea that became Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. They even sued him and settled for some $65m. Here’s what they did with the money.
• This stunning picture of the Singapore Grand Prix’s Marina Bay City circuit taken at dusk from a hotel suite. The race is scheduled for this weekend. Click here for a high-res version of the picture:

(Wong Maye-E/AP/Press Association Images)

THINGS WE SHARED

• Legendary RTÉ commentator Jimmy Magee has had some interesting things to say about former swimmer Michelle Smith and cyclist Lance Armstrong today.
• The story of the death of a boy in the care of the State at the Artane Industrial School in 1935 has come to light today after Conor McCabe reproduced this archive cutting from the Workers’ Voice newspaper.
• We all love a good cat video and we all miss the Olympics a little bit. Luckily and courtesy of Buzzfeed this video satisfies both of these needs:

YouTube: ripthorndash

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