Enjoy your coffee break by catching up on all the morning’s top news, every morning at 10:30am on TheLiberal.ie
#1 Water charges: Ministers, junior ministers, and other high-ranking politicians will have to pay the water charges on their second home, despite earlier reports to the contrary.
Minister for Finance Michael Noonan confirmed that the legal loophole that would allow politicians to claim such charges back as expenses is to be closed soon.
#2 Madeleine McCann: Parents of missing child Madeleine McCann have been targeted by malicious internet trolls, who have made calls for terrorists to kill them and have also sent and posted graphically manipulated photographs to social media.
Some insidious messages called for the McCanns to be “tortured” and to “burn in hell”.
Madeleine McCann disappeared from the family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, back in 2007. Despite intensive searches and questioning of multiple witnesses, no trace of the child has ever been found.
#3 Smoking ban: A bill will go on vote in the Dail next week, proposing a smoking ban in cars where children are travelling.
One of the three Senators who initiated the bill, Mark Daly of Fíanna Fáil, said that he expects the bill to be passed into law fairly quickly during next week’s Dail sessions.
#4 Ebola: An average of five people an hour become infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone, it has been estimated.
About 765 new cases were reported last week alone. However, only 327 “Ebola beds” are currently in operation in the entire country. This effectively means that scores of people may be dying anonymously in their homes, or in the streets.
A recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted that the number of Ebola-infected people could run into the hundreds of thousands by the new year unless efforts to combat the deadly disease are dramatically stepped up.
#5 Islamic State: RAF Tornado strikes IS target in Iraq.
A British warplane has destroyed an armed pick-up truck using a laser-guided bomb.
Tornado strike aircraft departing from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus have been carrying out combat missions against IS targets over the past few days. The UK is now part of the multinational coalition formed to fight the extremist threat in Iraq and Syria.