HERE ARE NINE stories to kickstart your New Year’s Eve – here’s to a clean slate in 2012, eh?

1. #COLD WAR, COLD SUMMER: Newly-released State papers have revealed several hidden stories from 1981 including fears that the Russians were looking at Rockall, an outcrop off Donegal, as a possible Cold War base. Ireland, however, was more interested in the threat to Irish summertime from an EEC proposal to synchronise clocks across Europe. It might have lost us a whole month of summer apparently.

2. #FOREIGN RELATIONS 1981: The expression of sympathy by Eamon de Valera to the German ambassador on the death of Adolf Hitler has always been a bone of contention but it turns out that the tricolour was not flown at half-mast at Leinster House. Charlie Haughey, meanwhile, was telling West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt that Ireland was not neutral and could possibly be interested in participating in European military defence.

3. #NEW YEAR’S HONOURS: Rory McIlroy has been awarded an MBE and Darren Clarke an OBE in Queen Elizabeth II’s New Year’s honours list. The golfers were two of several well-known names like actor Helena Bonham Carter, broadcaster Clive James and journalist Alex Crawford as well as hundreds of ‘ordinary’ people honoured for their work in the community, frontline services, science and other areas.

4. #BANKING: Carl O’Brien in the Irish Times today reports on internal documents at the Comptroller and Auditor General’s office which show that financial institutions could write off up to €4bn in tax liabilities – because of their huge losses between 2007 and 2009.

5. #NERVOUS MERKEL: On the 10th ‘birthday’ of the euro, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said in her televised New Year’s address that Europe is “facing its toughest currency test in decades”. The Deutsche Welle described her speech as failing “to strike the tone of confidence familiar to Germans from past chancellors’ speeches”.

6. #INSOLVENCY: High-end food emporium Fallon & Byrne in Dublin has a €1.4m tax bill that it can’t pay. The restaurant, grocery and function rooms venue is still turning over €8m in sales but the High Court heard that book-keeping discrepancies that were unknown to the directors have led to the company going into examinership, according to the Irish Independent and Irish Times.

7. #SYRIA: Protestors in Syria looking for the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime have been the target of further attacks from the regime. While the protestors continue to try to organise peaceful marches through their Facebook page, the Voice of America reports that 32 people were killed by military forces. The AFP reports claims of nail bombs being used to disperse protestors.

8. #INDIA: At least 33 people have been confirmed killed by Cyclone Thane which has hit southeast India. The Associated Press reports that houses collapses and trees uprooted in the storm.

9. #STAR OF 2011? We don’t hear so much about TV talent shows outside of the USA and Europe but we have to bring you to South Korea to hear this Adele-a-like, 15-year-old Park Ji Min. Just watch her fellow show contestants’ faces go green when she starts singing:

(via namchuri/Youtube.com)