Enjoy your coffee break by catching up on all the morning’s top news, every morning at 10:30am on TheLiberal.ie
#1 Weather: Thousand without power this morning as gusts of wind up to 117 km/h batter the country overnight.
Emergency services were flooded with calls overnight, reporting fallen trees and other
storm damage.
While the storm-force winds have somewhat eased this morning, Met Eireann have forecast thundery downpours throughout the day, with very unsettled weather to follow for the rest of the week.
#2 Ebola: Liberia gripped by fear.
The West African country has been ravaged by the worst outbreak of the deadly virus. More than half of the total Ebola-related deaths have occurred here.
Treatment centres have been overwhelmed for weeks, with demand far outstripping supply.
Now, Ebola-infected patients choose to stay at home and die anonymously, alone. Apart from the human drama this represents, it makes containing the spread of the disease an almost insurmountable task.
Every day, retrieval teams go around gathering the bodies of those lonely victims. The official death toll figures are misleading, as many dead remain unfound.
There is a stigma attached to dying of Ebola. Even if the patient, or their relatives survive, the community are likely to regard them with suspicion and turn them into pariahs.
The World Health Organization (WHO) now sees Ebola as a global threat, and have warned that unless far more resources are poured into combatting the disease, the number of infected will run into the hundreds of thousands by early 2015.
#3 Road carnage: Five die in Irish roads over the weekend.
Two men in their 20s died after the car they were traveling in crashed into a tree in Co. Kildare. Both men were pronounced dead at the scene.
These two fatalities bring the total number of road-related deaths over last weekend to five.
AA Roadwatch issues warning to motorist to be watchful while on the road.
#4 Jobs: Over 200 additional jobs to be announced shortly.
Software firm SolarWinds is expected to create about 100 jobs in Cork city. The company currently employs around 140 people in Cork.
Elsewhere, Ribworld, a Tipperary company which specialises in cooked meats, is to create 100 jobs in Co. Tipperary, with an €8m investment into its operations in Fethard.
#5 Gardai: Knife crime this year so far exceeds total number for the whole of 2013, Gardai have said.
Bladed weapons were involved in 13 murders up to the end of August. At the same time last year, that number was just six.
Overall, 22 murders have occurred in the Dublin region in the first eight months of 2014.