Every morning, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things you really need to know with your morning coffee.

1. #NEW ZEALAND: Two Irish citizens, both men, are amongst those killed in the earthquake in New Zealand. The Department of Foreign Affairs has told TheJournal.ie that eight people are still unaccounted for. Meanwhile, Patrick McGowan from Doengal has been described as a hero after saving a woman who was trapped in the rubble, the Irish Examiner reports. Up to 300 people are still missing in New Zealand, and the death toll from the earthquake has risen to 75. Large groups of people still remain trapped in the rubble.

2. #GE11: The first 1,000 votes will be cast in General Election 2011 today by islanders off the coasts of Donegal and Mayo.

3. #LIBYA: Two Irish Air Corps planes have just landed in Malta, where they are awaiting the go ahead to proceed to Tripoli to pick up a group of around 40 Irish citizens stranded there, TheJournal.ie has learned. In a diatribe that lasted an hour and a quarter, Muammar Gadaffi has said he will crush the revolt in Libya “house by house”. Meanwhile, the UN security council has condemned the Libyan authorities for using force against protesters, calling for those responsible to be held to account, the BBC adds.

4. #CHURCH: The Catholic Church in Ireland is on the brink of collapse, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said. The Irish Examiner reports that he hit out at his peers, claiming there was a lack of proper thought and debate about how the church should deal with its present difficulties but also admitted he had failed to lead the church to make the changes it needed to survive. He said the Catholic dominance of schools was ‘not tenable’, the Irish Times adds.

5. #DRUMM: David Drumm has failed to file any defence against allegation he defrauded an American bank, the Irish Independent reports. The former Anglo chief is now facing the prospect of an uncontested judgment being made against him, a US court was told yesterday.

6. #INQUEST: The daughter of a woman with dementia, Alice Clifford, who went missing from a hospital in Dublin in 1979 said at her inquest the pain at not knowing what happened to her is still as great now as it was then, the Irish Examiner reports.

7. #INSURANCE: One of the state’s largest insurers has warned that premiums could rise because of a ruling by the European Court of Justice that it was legally inappropriate to link insurance risks to a person’s gender. The court is due to make its final decision next week, the Irish Times reports.

8. #BAD NEWS: Our planet will be “unrecognisable” by 2050, the American Association for the Advancement of Science warned yesterday. And we don’t think they mean in a good way. To cope with a population that’s expected to hit 9 billion by that year, “we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000,” said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund.

9. #ENID BLYTON: Golly gosh! A new Enid Blyton novel, Mr Tumpy’s Caravan, has been discovered, the Telegraph reports.