EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you the nine things you need to know as you begin your day. Which, today, might include confirmation about what day of the week it is. Today, 2 January 2013, is a Wednesday.
1. #FISCAL CLIFF: A deal is done. The House of Representatives has voted to approve the Senate’s measures extending tax cuts for families earning up to $450,000 (€340,000) a year, a day after they were due to expire. There’ll now be more talks on where the government should cut back on spending, with the deal including a two-month deferral of an automatic 9 per cent cut in almost all government spending.
2. #PROPERTY: The year’s first analyses of the property market suggests that there’s been some stabilisation of the property market in Dublin. The Daft and MyHome reports offer little consolation for property owners elsewhere, though: for the first time, property in Connacht and Ulster has fallen further from its peak value than in the capital.
3. #SEARCH AND RESCUE: A mammoth 12-hour rescue mission was required yesterday after a walker found himself in difficulty in southwest Donegal. The 28-year-old man raised the alarm himself at about 1:15pm on New Year’s Day; he was found within two hours, but it was after midnight before he could be removed.
4. #JOBS MEETING: The Cabinet is set to hold an ‘emergency’ meeting dedicated to coming up with proposals for new jobs. Enda Kenny, pledging to get tough on new job creation, has told many of today’s papers that a dedicated meeting on job creation will be held this month.
5. #SPEED CAMERAS: Ireland’s ‘GoSafe’ mobile speed cameras are set to be relocated in the coming weeks in an effort to continue Ireland’s progress in cutting road deaths, the Irish Independent tells us this morning. It reports that local authorities are preparing to move the speed traps that were first launched in 2011, and will encourage drivers to slow down in dangerous areas.
6. #ASHES: A Tallaght family has issued an urgent appeal for burglars to return an urn containing the ashes of the householders’ dead parents. The six-inch black square urn was stolen from a house at Deerpark Place in Kiltipper, Tallaght on Monday night.
7. #ESCAPE: 27 juvenile inmates in a prison in Peru have made an audacious bid for freedom – escaping in the middle of the New Year’s festivities. A first group of 13 inmates ran on Monday night during the celebrations, while another 14 followed yesterday when guards were distracted by a delivery.
8. #DATING: If you’re using the internet to find new love, log on at 8:52pm. That’s the time when most people log onto dating sites to try and find a new flame, according to figures from website Match.com which are published in today’s Irish Daily Star.
9. #UNHAPPY ENDING: A Slovakian man who returned home to his wife after going missing for 19 years has been turfed out by his missus. The man had gone missing in 1993 during a hiking trip, but was identified in Prague last month and then sent back to his family home. His wife, unimpressed that he’d been missing for so long, had moved on – and sent her husband packing almost immediately.
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