BEFORE YOU RACE for the door this Friday evening, check out TheJournal.ie’s pick of five stories you really should read this evening…

1. #BAILOUT: Ireland has met its first-quarter obligations under the bailout deal – so says Finance Minister Michael Noonan and the troika of the EC/IMF/ECB. More good news: Ireland has NOT made a list of the poorest countries in the developed world…

2. #RONAN KERR: It is believed that the bombmaker who constructed the device which killed Constable Ronan Kerr in Omagh was also behind three other murder attempts.

3. #LIGHTS OUT: Sad news for arthouse cinema lovers. The Lighthouse cinema in Smithfield has been wound up in the High Court today. Co-founder Maretta Dillon told TheJournal.ie that the company had known the rent would be doubling when they signed the lease in 2007 – but they had been told that the cinema would be based in “a very specific type of environment” that failed to materialise.

4. #FUEL PRICES: A survey of fuel prices in Ireland shows that the price of a litre of petrol and a litre of diesel have hit an all-time high.

5. #US: A man in an adult bookstore in San Francisco got a little too hot under the collar… He has been hospitalised after somehow catching fire in the shop. Horrified onlookers tried to extinguish the blaze when he ran out onto the street in flames.