EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you the nine things you need to know as you begin your day.
1. #CLAMPING: Fees charged by private vehicle clamping companies are to be capped for the first time under new rules, which will see a maximum penalty of €80 applied to illegally-parked vehicles. Car clampers operation on private property will now be licenced by the Department of Transport legislation as part of the Regulation of Vehicle Immobilisation Bill 2013.
2. #BLOOM-ING HELL: A commemorative €10 coin released for sale by the Central Bank of Ireland yesterday to commemorate James Joyce contains an error in its transcription of a quotation from Ulysses. The passage included in the coin includes a surplus word – ‘that’ – which was not in Joyce’s original text.
3. #WEXFORD: A man has been killed in an industrial accident in Fethard-on-Sea, Co Wexford. The 48-year-old was brought to Waterford Regional Hospital following the incident, where he was pronounced dead. A post-mortem examination will take place today.
4.#SAVITA: The inquest into the death of 31-year-old dentist Savita Halappanavar enters its fourth day today. Yesterday, a midwife who treated Savita admitted that she said an abortion would not be possible as Ireland was a “Catholic country”.
5. #OVERFISHING: Up to 200 Irish and international conservation groups have called on the Minister for Agriculture to support a move to end overfishing in European Union waters within two years. The groups say mismanagement under the Common Fisheries Policy over the past 30 years has depleted stocks significantly in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, RTÉ reports.
6. #COMMUNION: The Department of Social Protection has confirmed that a grant to help Catholic families pay the cost of children’s First Communion, saying that exceptional needs payments (ENPs) will no longer be made available for religious ceremonies.
7. #GUN CONTROL: America’s First Lady Michelle Obama has made an emotional address in support of “common-sense reforms” to gun laws in the US. Speaking in her hometown, Obama encourages business leaders to donate to programmes for at-risk youth and back her husband’s efforts to introduced stricter legislation on gun access, NPR reports.
8. #NORTH KOREA: The North Korean situation is likely to be top of the agenda at a meeting of the G8 countries at London today, according to Reuters. South Korea and the US today remain on high alert for a North Korea missile launch.
9. #SPACE: Physicist Stephen Hawking has urged the world’s governments to remain dedicated to space exploration – believing that humans will die out unless they find another planet to live on. Hawking, now 71, told an audience that humans would not make it into the next millennium unless they found somewhere else to live – saying the ‘fragile’ planet Earth would be unable to sustain our existence.
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