EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you the nine things you need to know as you kick off your day.

1. #SHOOTING: A man in his late 20s has been arrested in connection with the shooting dead of a 35-year-old man late on Friday night. The victim was dropped off at St James’s Hospital in Dublin in a car which was later found abandoned on a nearby street. The man was pronounced dead at the hospital.

2. #INDIA: The Indian Prime Minister has appealed for calm after a medical student who was savagely gang-raped on a New Delhi bus died in a Singapore hospital last night. Manmohan Singh led the tributes to the unnamed 23-year-old, whose body is to be flown back to India later today.

3. #CORK AIRPORT: A lawsuit has been filed in a US court against the manufacturers of the aircraft which crashed at Cork Airport almost two years ago, killing six people. Court documents seen by TheJournal.ie claim that the aircraft was “not reasonably safe” and “defective and unreasonably dangerous”.

4. #POWER OUT: Several thousand homes remain without power this morning after strong winds caused power cuts to an estimated 5,000 households across the country. Met Éireann has warned that winds will again reach gale force later this evening and AA Roadwatch has advised drivers to take extra care when driving.

5. #STATE PAPERS: What kinds of things did people send to Charles Haughey when he was Taoiseach? How much was a round of drinks in 1973? And why was Britain angry with Ireland during the Falklands War? Here’s the latest from the newly-released State papers from 1982.

6. #SOCIAL WELFARE: The Department of Social Protection is planning to introduce facial-recognition software from the beginning of next year in a bid to identify welfare claimants, according to reports in the Irish Examiner this morning.

7. #LOCAL AUTHORITY: Limerick City and County Councils are set to merge by mid-2014 under a plan published by Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan. The move will see the number of senior grades at management level reduced by 40 per cent and savings of €6.1 million to be identified by January 2015.

8. #FUKUSHIMA: Japan’s Prime Minister has said the clean-up at Fukushima nuclear plant is unlike anything humanity has ever undertaken. Newly-elected Shinzo Abe, who visited the plant just days after his party won a general election, said a massive amount of work is still required to decommission the stricken plant.

9. #FISCAL CLIFF: Barack Obama has expressed his frustration with the slow pace of talks aimed at avoiding major tax hikes and spending cuts from coming into force before Tuesday’s deadline. The so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ will kick in from 1 January unless a deal is reached by political leaders over the next three days (and if you want to know more about what’s happening, here’s our explainer on what the fiscal cliff is and why it matters).