EVERY DAY, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things you need to know with your morning cup of coffee.
1. #OLYMPICS: The Games of the XXX Olympiad will get under way in London later today as the opening ceremony marks the start of over a fortnight of sport. Ireland has 66 competitors in 14 different sports and gold medal hopeful Katie Taylor will carry the tricolour at tonight’s opening ceremony in East London where a £27 million opening show is being directed by the Oscar-winning Danny Boyle. Here’s what our writers are hoping for at the Games.
2. #LONDON CALLING: Enda Kenny will be a busy man today as he meets Team Ireland in London to wish them all the best in their endeavours. Later he will meet the US presidential candidate Mitt Romney where the former Massachusetts governor will be hoping to avoid the kind of gaffes that have left his UK trip being dubbed #RomneyShambles on Twitter. In the evening Kenny will attend a reception at Buckingham Palace for heads of State and Government prior to the opening ceremony.
3. #COAST: The search will resume this morning for a man who went missing while fishing on Valentia Island in Co Kerry yesterday. The Coast Guard says that it is going to concentrate on the area around Culloo Head today. Meanwhile, rescuers from Howth Coast Guard were able to recover a female tourist who had fallen about twenty feet while walking a cliff path to the beach yesterday. The dramatic video of the rescue is here.
4. #YOUTH DEFENCE: The pro-life group Youth Defence is being investigated over its use of an image in its high-profile anti-abortion billboard campaign. One of the images used during the campaign is being investigated to see if it breached the license agreement of the company from which it was purchased. However the group says the matter is closed.
5. #FACEBOOK: Shares in the social networking giant Facebook fell in after hours trading yesterday after the company posted its first financial results since it went public in May. Facebook posted a $157 million loss but the company said in its statement that payments to shareholders was the main reason for the losses. Revenue at $1.18 billion was up on the same quarter in 2011 when revenue was $895 million.
6. #QUINN: The wife of jailed Seán Quinn jr works as a receptionist at a car dealership in Dublin, the Irish Independent reports. Karen Woods earns an annual salary of €21,000 on top of the reported €320,000 she gets after tax in wages from three Russian firms, the paper says. The news comes as it now appears likely that Quinn jr will remain in jail until at least October because his appeal against his contempt of court will not be heard until then.
7. #SHIFTING: People who do shift work may have an increased risk of having a heart attack or a stroke according to research published today. The Irish Times reports that the study – published in the British Medical Journal – shows that shift work was associated with a 23 per cent increase in the risk of heart attack. Working nights were associated with the steepest increase in risk of a coronary event.
8. #iMASS: A tech-savvy priest in Dundalk uses his iPad to deliver his sermons, the Irish Examiner reports. The paper’s Gerry Hand writes that Fr Paddy Rushe, from the Redeemer parish in the Louth town, believes the tablet device is a wonderful addition to his delivery of mass. Fr Rushe told the paper that the iPad “has everything a priest needs”.
9. #NO CONNECTION: Did One Directions’ token Irishman cause Twitter’s outage yesterday? Well no but The Sun reports that Niall Horan did cause the meltdown of Twitcam after he told his five million followers on Twitter that he was about to go on the live video website to give them an update. Excited fans flocked to the the website and overloaded it meaning many missed out on a chance to see Horan, who had just got out of the shower.
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